What do you give someone who gives you a kidney? A PowerBook, if that's what he asks for, and that's apparently what one family member wanted when he gave his sister one of his kidneys. The story comes to us from Phil Shapiro in a PC World column asking why Apple doesn't use more senior citizens in its advertising.
Mr. Shapiro was consulting with an older couple in the late 1990s when the wife said, "Why don't we show him the kidney PowerBook? Maybe he can answer some questions about that computer."
He asked why they call it the "kidney PowerBook," she said, "My husband donated one of his kidneys to his sister. She asked him what he'd like in return. Without hesitation, he said, 'I'd love a PowerBook.'"
She apparently loved him enough to get it for him.
Beyond the amusing anecdote, Mr. Shapiro's broader point was that there are a lot of older Americans using Macs, something that Apple doesn't usually acknowledge in its advertising.
It's something that we've acknowledged at The Mac Observer for more than ten years, however, which is how long we've been publishing Nancy Carroll Gravley's Computing with Bifocals column.
In 2000, would you have traded a kdiney for one of these?