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Apple's Fruitful Future
Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
Now I'm worried.
In this confusing world, the one comforting, constant, bedrock, fundamental certainty has been that the pundits would explain how Apple is moribund, in a death spiral, and will be gone in about a year. The first time I heard that was in 1985. Not counting, of course, the people in 1984 that said the Mac was dead on arrival because it didn't have an 80-column screen and cursor keys.
Circa 1990, I worked in a Fortune 500 company which cancelled all its Mac skunkworks projects, due to Apple's imminent demise, scaled back all its Windows projects, and beefed up all its OS/2 projects, because Gartner's colorful graphs showed OS/2 would pass not only the Mac but MS-DOS and Windows in, if I recall correctly, less than two years, and would dominate the market by 1995.
Nobody is saying Apple is dead? Uh-oh, I'm worried. Maybe it's time to start short-selling Apple stock.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I had the serial number 71 Apple II (I wrote the little chess game that was distributed with early Apples on the demo software cassette), bought an early Mac (I wrote the ExperOPS5 commercial product on it), and I still use Macs a lot for my work (although I use Linux more).
For me, Apple products are "feel good" products. Visually they look great compared to the competition. The software always seems a little more solid (probably because of only needing to support their own hardware).
You can certainly get more bang for the buck with a PC clone running Linux, but Macs with OS X are great products. When I bought my first Mac, they were very new and one day I brought my Mac into work because I wanted my secretary to type in a big stack of notes that I had written on a business trip. I immediately got pulled into a meeting and when I got out of the meeting my non-technical secretary was done - it just took her a few minutes to figure out the Mac -- try that with a PC in 1984!
When I get older, losing disk space, many years from now,
Will you still use me to send an email line, birthday greetings,
or slashdot whine?
If you used me 'till quarter to three, could I crash once more?
Will you still boot me, will you still root me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Hmm------mmm---mmmh.
You'll be older, too.Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay
with you.
You'll need to be handy, mending a fuse, when my ps is gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, you can't use me if my chips are fried.
Going to swap meets, digging for parts, who could ask for more?
Will you still boot me, will you still root me, when I'm sixty
four?
Every summer we can vist one infinite loop, if it's
not too dear. We shall scrimp and save.
And sitting on your knee, that newton from e-bay
Open a shell prompt, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting
away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still boot me, will you still root me, when I'm sixty
four?
*Yeah.... I know it's lame....*
Emerald Astrology