In honor of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, that adorable book some of you (or some of your kids) may be familiar with, we now have the If You Give Microsoft Toaster Tech episode. This isn’t official Microsoft swag, but someone with spare time on his hands and a knack for tinkering designed this brave little toaster that brands bread with the Windows logo. Of course, I wouldn’t buy one of these unless I had the Windows 7 upgrade coupon. This brings to mind: if Apple were to create a toaster, would you have to buy premium Apple bread for it to work? And would there be Psystar and Quo toasters for cheaper? How about a Linux toaster? Fill up the comments below with your wonderfully creative toaster/tech analogies. You could even bleed over into other kitchen appliances (an Ubuntu fridge, for instance, would be nearly good enough for anyone, but you’d have tinker and hack a bit before your ice would come out cubed).
An Apple toaster would cost 20% more than an off-brand toaster. And you’d be able to use any kind of bread, but because Steve Jobs doesn’t think people should be eating white bread, the Apple toaster wouldn’t toast white bread unless you bought a third party adapter. The Apple toaster would also have a user interface so revolutionary that we’d all wonder how we wasted our time pushing the plunger down all these years on other toasters. People with Apple toasters would develop a superiority complex and look down on all the chumps who continue to buy off-brand cheapo toasters.
I think the other would be better
No to mention that the bread to be used in Apple toasters will have an unique design, not compatible to other ones – worst, you will find them only in Apple Stores.
And Apple would try to keep it quiet that a few of their toasters set the bread on fire.
Nice to see Microsoft-fanboy toasters are about as innovative as Microsoft are!
See from 2001 a Java toaster: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/04/bread_as_a_display_device/
Also recently, a NetBSD toaster: http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/arm-netbsd-toaster.php
Not forgetting that Oak likely featured in toasters during its development…
Edited 2009-07-22 17:46 UTC
And don’t forget the ’99 WebPuter from Uranus Teenysystems (Bud Uglly Design’s parody of Sun Microsystems):
“Anti-Burn© toaster. (Toast not included)”
http://budugllydesign.com/archivebud/uranus/uranus.html
As a safety feature, the Windows toaster does not include the fork() call.
… would create the right colours, namely brown!
Actually,Amiga had Toaster Tech 20 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster
Edited 2009-07-22 21:23 UTC
Microsoft: After the release of toaster vista which weighs over ten pounds, many users have reverted back to the lighter toaster XP. Microsoft is said to fix this with toaster 7.
Apple: May only be used with apple branded bread and costs 20% more than a standard Toaster XP, however it comes in a sleek white case.
Linux: Comes in a box of random components that you can put together and change anyway you please (although everybody uses the rotating cube case) Will only toast if you say “sudo” first.
BSD: Also comes in a box with random components, but those components can also be fitted to toaster xp and the apple toaster unlike the linux toaster which uses the GPL toaster licence.
BeOS: A great toaster, its only hinderance is it can only toast 10 year old bread.
..is already here!
http://www.osnews.com/story/21878/Apple_Tries_to_Downplay_iPod_Fire…
Brilliant, just brilliant!
Also I think that apart from Apple premium bread, Palm will probably make gread that’s at least compatible to the first few versions of the iToaster 😉
Because everyone still thinks you have to hack everything together yourself (which is no longer true).
Apple toaster: You cannot exchange the bread with this toaster. If you run out of bread, you have to ship it back to apple to replace the bread. But it looks nice and the toast is tasty.
Windows toaster: There are many vendors that sell this toaster. It makes palatable toast, even though it sometimes comes out black. Watch out for the Genuine Windows Toasting Advantage thing.
Linux toast: Makes very fine toast. You have to feed the bread in the toaster manually, but it comes out good most of the time. Can be disassebled and reassembled easily, and parts are easily interchangeable with other Linux toasters.