Apple has unveiled a revolutionary new product that promises to change the way we travel forever. Dubbed iWarp, Apple’s latest creation is a matter-antimatter reactor only one inch thick that can transport a crew of seven humans to Alpha Centauri and back on a single charge.
“For decades, we’ve been stuck in low Earth orbit in big, clunky spaceships. They were slow, expensive, unreliable and just not a whole lot of fun to fly. But the iWarp changes all of that. It’s interstellar travel for the rest of us,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs told reporters and tech bloggers gathered at Apple’s “data center” in North Carolina. That data center has in fact turned out to be a state-of-the-art advanced physics research facility where, over the past few years, Apple’s engineers have learned to harness Jobs’ famous Reality Distortion Field for practical applications.
“The iWarp is incredible, but it’s also very simple,” Jobs said in a brief demo. “After inserting a small amount of fuel, the user simply taps a destination on the attached Retina Display — which supports full Multi-Touch capabilities — and BOOM. iWarp does the rest.” Jobs and the assembled reporters then travelled to the Zeta II Reticuli star system, a distance of 12 parsecs, in a matter of seconds.
“And the best part is this,” Jobs said after pressing the “Home” button and bringing the awed assembly of reporters back to Earth. “We’re selling the iWarp at a price we think our competitors won’t be able to match: $999. iWarp comes in black or white, and it’ll be shipping in white from day one.”
Critics from the Android camp have already dismissed the iWarp as a “toy.” Andy Rubin in particular has lambasted Apple for its “closed ecosystem,” saying that “users can’t input their own space-time coordinates on the iWarp. You can only choose from Apple’s pre-approved star systems. This creates a ‘walled garden’ approach to interstellar travel, which doesn’t benefit users as much as Android’s open model.” When asked when Google expects to deliver a competitive Android-based device, Rubin replied, “We expect to have the Licorice version of Android ready to go in early 2012, but it’ll be up to the starship manufacturers if they want to support it.”
In a typically terse response to an email criticising Apple’s “closed” approach to interstellar travel, Jobs pointed out that “Without precise calculations, you could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova. And that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?”
Apple debuts iWarp: ‘Interstellar travel for the rest of us’ originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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