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By Chuckmonster on Sunday, 18th January 2009 10:29pm
  » filed under Las Vegas  comments: 1

    Follow @vegastripping

Some of you may remember when we scooped the story about Fontainebleau partnering with Apple to have iMacs in every room.

The story went viral to many of the Apple fan and technology blogs, spurring tons of discussion on them about how - technically - Fontainebleau's iMacs are going to integrate into the resort and how much leeway users will have when using them.

We stopped by the Fontainebleau visitors center the other day to investigate iMacs, room layouts and whatever else we could squeeze out of the tour guides. They were super helpful and extremely forthcoming with answers, when available. I got the impression that a lot of the details about Fontainebleau are - surprisingly - still in a bit of flux.

All of Fontainebleau's 3800 guest "flats" and suites will feature 20" Apple iMac computers, all of which are wired into global resorts reservation system. Guests will be able to make any and all reservations - dinner, shows, spa and presumably poker room - from the iMac without having to interface with a concierge or operator.

Guests will also be able to use the computers to visit a set number of websites - a "quasi-basic cable line-up" of 10-15 news, sports and entertainment domains, which probably won't include any that will enable productivity (Gmail etc.,) or goofing around (social networking sites.)

There will be no access to the filesystem or standard Apple applications - iPhoto, iTunes, Mail, QuickTime, Chess - whatsoever. Essentially, the iMac's are a really expensive kiosk system/nettop masquerading as a killer amenity.

For those who wish to use a computer, you'll have to bring your own, and plug it in to the pay to play ethernet or wifi connection.

As a Mac user who always travels with a laptop, I don't really see the lack of Mac-ability an issue... but if I had booked Fontainebleau because of the iMac in every room, I'll be more than a little let down about it being essentially locked in Safari kiosk mode (a feature which I don't believe yet exists.) If I were a convention traveler, who expected to use the Mac for actual productivity... I'd be livid.

Offering an iMac and getting WebTV with better hardware and less net access is a dangerous amenity to tout, lets hope that Fontainebleau is forthright about this in their marketing materials.

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Comments & Discussion:

 rascal posted on Monday, 19th January 2009 - 12:22 am

I don't know, it can't be any worse that the CC advertizing their buffet, or the Trop with their clean comfortable rooms.

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