Category: Newest & Most Improved

April 8, 2045
CUPERTINO–With its customary flair for the dramatic, Apple computer announced Wednesday the back-to-school availability of the ‘PiggyMac,’ a bioengineered Macintosh computer embedded in a living, breathing piglet. “This little piggy does the markets/This little piggy’s a phone,” sang the cast of the hit Broadway musical ‘The Sopranos’ from behind a darkened scrim, onstage at the company’s Cupertino amphitheater. “This little piggy’s got the most beef/That Redmond piggy’s got none.”

Built into a proprietary toy breed of American Yorkshire, and reaching full size at little over two-and-a-half feet long and eighteen inches high at the shoulder, the PiggyMac is the latest salvo in an ongoing ‘convergence’ war between Apple and its rivals over conflicting visions of the best way to combine traditional computers and biotechnology in a form that is easy for customers to understand and use.

“The Piggy is a real shot across the bow,” notes one industry observer. “They’ve really leapfrogged Microsoft and its cohorts. All the stuff I’ve seen out of Redmond is too component-ized. Sure, it’s cool to have real slices of grey-matter right in your Wintel box, but that doesn’t compare to a real pig; I mean, the vision is so much more complete.”

Powered by a patented Distributed, Clustered-Cellular Processor designed and produced by Perdue Living Sciences of Concord, North Carolina, the PiggyMac runs entirely off of energy produced through the traditional, biological processes of digestion and cellular respiration. “Battery power? Too dirty! Solar power? Passe!” chanted Apple CEO Steve Jobs during the PiggyMac roll-out. “I’ve got slop power!”

Featuring an integrated, subcutaneous touch-type keyboard engineered from ‘micro-knuckles’ for full key articulation and biological compatibility, the PiggyMac comes complete with a high-resolution, 256-color, bio-luminescent ‘back-fat’ screen and includes unparalleled natural-language processing and voice recognition that extends and focuses the pig’s renown native intelligence. “I did like the keyboard,” notes one early beta-tester. “It had a real organic feel, sort of a cross between phrenology and petting. But I have to tell you, that once the Piggy learned its name, and started following me around and understanding my voice, I was hooked.”

Though bundled with standard business applications, including Excel and MS Word, the PiggyMac is initially targeted at the recreational and educational markets. “A pet is a natural interface, especially for learning,” explains Apple VP of People’s Affairs Kyle Youngishness. “What’s the best way to interface with all the info out there on the network? Reading a screen? I don’t think so. Nothing compares to having a cute, loving pet pig recite the Declaration of Independence to your kids. With the integrated Harman Kardon digital stereo vocal cords, that’s what you’ll get. Your kids will just eat it up.”

April 6, 2014
MILAN–In a move extending last season’s alliance between design firms Prada and LVMH, the two announced Monday that significant portions of each of the major lines from the two houses would be replaced this season by warrants for the purchase of designer outfits and furnishings. “It has always been among our deepest convictions that good design should be more widely available,” explains LVMH Chief of Initiatives Basil Sprout. “Good design is for the People, for all of the people, and this warrant initiative ensures that great design is within the means of the masses.”

The warrants–special certificates entitling the bearer to purchase a specified product at a specified price during a specified season–will be sold at a fraction of the cost of the underlying product, typically between 3% and 7% of the retail price. “The public may not be able to afford to purchase outright a Bobois handbag or a Prada toe-sock,” notes Sprout. “But, with our new line of warrants, they can enjoy designer products without all the fuss and expense of owning the base material object.”

In addition to expanding the size of the market for high-end designer goods, the warrants are also predicted to cut production costs at both firms. “The Street is bound to recognize the profoundly greater opportunities for scalability in the warrants market,” opines SSBPWC analyst Trumpet Graine. “Scale efficiencies are much greater in the production of warrants. While, in general, costs per unit decrease the more handbags you produce, it literally costs almost nothing to produce a new warrant, especially when that warrant isn’t really designed to be exercised and hence never requires production of the underlying asset.”

Beyond anticipated savings in production costs, the two houses point to the space-saving convenience of owning warrants rather than storage-hogging pants suits and propylene couches. “Besides budget constraints, many of our clients, and potential clients, are space constrained,” explains LVMH’s Sprout. “You can only fit so many Diesel armchairs in that loft apartment. How many Sander suits can fit in that closet? Well, warrants don’t take up any space! They offer the leverage to fit 10, 20, even 30 DK armoires into your bedroom! Luxury!”

Experts point to the warrants as an ideal solution to two challenges facing the industry: “On the one hand increasing income disparities have been eroding the market for elite luxury goods for years, forcing houses to raise prices dramatically just to maintain brand exclusivity,” explains Graine. “On the other hand, lowering prices and expanding production dilutes the value of the brands. If you see every Tom, Dick, and Harry wearing that designer watch, it loses its cachet.”

Because sale of the proposed warrants does not involve increased production of the underlying goods, the firms expect to gain the revenue benefits of a broader, near mass-market without the deleterious effects of brand dilution. “That’s the genius of the warrants,” exclaims Graine. “Market-saturating sales without market saturation!”

February 8, 2047
GALVESTON–Texas-based Seastream Living Environments Inc. announced Monday the nationwide availability of its line of traditional and double-wide Whailers: portable, sea-worthy trailer homes built on specially-engineered whale chassis and outfitted with all the features and conveniences of conventional trailers. “We are outstandingly proud of our Whailers,” exclaims Seastream CEO Brad de Brad. “A triumph of engineering! We’re using Nature’s solutions to solve Human problems. A real triumph of harmony and elegance over brute-force design.”

The Whailers, initially available in two models–a spacious Gray and a sporty Orca–are custom grown in the company’s Galveston production facility and feature a living room, galley kitchen, master suite with master bath, guest room, wall-to-wall carpeting, and natural-grain vidoleum paneling throughout. “Even though the product is revolutionary in so many ways,” notes Brad. “We were very careful not to neglect any of the creature comforts of a conventional trailer home.”

Designed to endure the unpredictable and destructive weather affecting regions in which trailer homes and trailer parks are popular, Whailers are capable of swimming in both fresh and salt waters and weather rough seas through a series of dives, each lasting between 20 and 45 minutes. “The Whailers are really designed for the parks here along the Gulf Coast, and in the Florida panhandle, where hurricanes and torrential flooding are common,” explains Brad. “As long as you’re parked near water, though, no weather is going to destroy your Whailer. A tornado coming? Just dive into a nearby lake or river and wait it out.”

Additional features include a low-maintenance, all-temperature, natural-color, natural-texture hide requiring only “bi-weekly wetting with an ordinary garden hose” while “ground-parked” or on the included towable, flatbed trailer; two responsive, blinking eyes; a screened-in porch on baleen models; all-natural insulation; and soothing, ambient whale call “just a tickle away.”

Residents in prototype Whailers placed in parks throughout southern Texas over the past year report overall satisfaction with the Whailers: “Safe as houses! That’s all I can say,” recalls one Galveston-area beta resident. “Hurricanes Willard018, Barbara_Big, and HokeyPokemon came through last week. I think I slept through at least two of them.”

Among the few bugs reported were occasionally dangerous, involuntary “tail-flail” during mopping of the bathroom and kitchen, slightly stale air during some prolonged fresh-water dives, and faulty microwave ovens. Seastream reports that all three bugs have been addressed in the production models.

Seastream Gray and Orca Whailers are now available through your local RV and trailer-home dealer. A Humpback model, including a spacious sleeping loft, is scheduled for dealer delivery in the fall.

March 3, 2006
MILAN–In a bid to both attract technologically savvy clients and combat the scourge of high-fashion knock-offs, a special research committee of the Joint Council for Fashion and Design announced Wednesday the final draft an open standard for the wireless authentication of designer garments. “The standard has been a longtime in development,” notes Greta Weif, Chair of the Council’s steering committee. “And we are very pleased with the results. The system will, at last, bring the technology of fashion awareness into the 21st century.”

The system, known as ‘Authus,’ features wireless chips stitched into the labels or linings of designer garments. The flexible chips, made of a durable, semi-conducting polymer, each include identifying information, a unique ‘private’ encryption key, and bluetooth-compatible radio frequency wireless functionality. When in the proximity of an Authus garment, bluetooth aware devices will be able to receive information about the garment and it’s provenance, including the designer, season, line, and studio.

“Though it is about brand awareness, [Authus] is nothing as vulgar as advertising,” notes Hilbert Monroe, Helmut Lang’s Chief of Anthropology. “Our fieldwork indicates that many clients in our core demographic hesitate to inquire about a garment’s origins out of a fear of appearing ignorant. Authus ensures that the signature on our garments is available, always, discreetly, to everyone.”

The Authus standard also calls for use of a key-pair encryption scheme for authentication of a garment’s label. “Each label includes a private encryption key paired with a public key stored on a designer’s or studio’s secured server,” explains the Council’s Weif. “Information coming out of the chip is signed by the chip’s private key, and can be opened only by the public key. If there’s no public key for the garment on the designer’s server, then you can’t open its label and you know the garment’s a fake.”

In addition to information about the designer and season, Authus labels also identify the location of purchase, the amount paid for the garment at the time of purchase, and, for past-season garments, a depreciated value. “Our customers tend to be very price conscious,” explains Anthropologist Monroe. “Price transparency is crucial. If a customer paid $8,500 for peppermint cashmere socks, he wants the world to know so, in a verifiable way. That same customer wants to know if the other guy with the same socks bought them at-market, in-season, in Bal Harbor, or if he picked them up marked-down at an outlet, off-season.”

By pursuing open standards, the Council aims to enable cross-designer aggregation functions, including the ability of an ensemble including garments from different designers to produce a unified informational profile through a combination of inter-garment and inter-server communications. Weif explains: “What you should be able to do is point your PDA at somebody on the street and get an instant profile, including a total gross expenditure for the whole ensemble: where they shop and how much they spend, in a snapshot.”

Responding to the Authus announcement, privacy experts sounded notes of concern. “We are justifiably concerned about how this system is going to be used,” worries First Privacy founder Willamette Quan. “Beyond the nightmare possibilities of ‘fashion police’ devices looking for ‘knock offs’ is the subtler, but deeper, threat the system poses to the anonymity that is crucial to equality in public spaces. Do we really want to live in a world where everybody walks around with a dollar figure over their heads?”

“Fashion is about publicity, not privacy,” responds Prada spokesman Michael Adams-Green-Bury. “Our clothes make a complex social statement, and the [Authus] labels are part of that statement. Our clients choose us because they have something to say. Our job is to help them say it.”