The Mac Maineiac is on vacation this week. In his stead, we run this article submitted by “real technology” guest contributor Siddhartha Finch.

Dateline: Redmond, Washington. April 1st, 2004. In what many industry analysts consider a bold move, software giant Microsoft today announced a new product: Windows for Macintosh (Deluxe Edition), or “WMD”. Cloaked in the most fervent secrecy and stringent non-disclosure agreements since the introduction of Microsoft “Bob”, today’s announcement came as a complete surprise to many industry pundits.

“This announcement came as a complete surprise to me”, said one industry pundit, on condition of anonymity.

According to Microsoft design team leader Phil Mypeign, “To tell you the truth, things were just getting a little boring around here. I mean, come on, we already own everything else. Besides, with the release of our next version of Windows, nicknamed “Longhorn”, being delayed for a couple of years, we needed something to fill the time – and you can only spend so many hours a day on the Playstation – er, oh, wait, of course, I meant XBox. Yeah, XBox.”

When asked about the difficulties of designing an operating system from the ground up for totally different hardware, Mypeign said, “We had no trouble writing the code without user input or feedback– we’re used to that.”

What about testing the new operating system on Mac hardware? Mypeign continued, “Well, testing Windows for Macintosh was somewhat difficult. In order to find a Mac with features similar to today’s new PCs, we had to go find a two-year-old iMac. Do you know how hard that is? I mean, there’s people out there using Macs that are over, and I know this is hard to believe, that are over four years old? And to make matters worse, they’re capable of running the latest Mac OS, and their Macs run faster with the newer system! Windows for Macintosh will certainly put a stop to that. We will put our customary bloated layers of added-on code requiring continuous hardware upgrades in every box of Windows for Macintosh we sell.”

Microsoft also assured Mac users that Windows for Mac would have the same features as its Windows for PC counterpart.

“Windows for Mac will be fully compatible with all of the popular viruses, spyware, adware, Trojan horses, pop-up windows, and system errors that have become our trademark here at Microsoft”, stated a spokesman for the company.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski