I enjoy well-done April Fools jokes, and for years we published an April Fools issue of TidBITS with what were essentially highly speculative articles masquerading as April 1st reality. I hope to compile more of those later today, but for this thread, let’s share any April Fools jokes that we see in the tech world in 2022.
I want this topic to embody the light-hearted spirit behind April Fools Day, so I will ruthlessly delete any critical, snide, or negative comments. Keep it fun, or keep it to yourself.
As a leadoff, OWC just announced the 80-port Gargantuan Dock. Not enough ports? You’ll never say that again.
I was totally and publicly pranked by Adam on an April Fool’s Day around 1998-1999, and before the introduction of this list. At the time MS had recently introduced Word 4 or 5.something for Mac. neither that, or any other new iterations could come close to version 3.1 of Word for usability and speed. And coverage in the press for the newer versions tended to not be very positive at all, including in TidBits.
Just before lunchtime on April 1, I get an alert note on my inbox from TidBITS that Microsoft will be reintroducing an upgraded version Word 3.1 to previous users. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to email the good news to Mac user colleagues, friends and family members. When I realized it was a prank not long after, I had to email and call everyone who received the good news.
