Top Ten Apple Rumors of All Time

An anonymous reader writes "CNET have taken a look back at 30 years of Apple rumors during which we have witnessed Apple's 'rise, fall, and rise again, like a kind of technological Jesus Christ.' Some of the rumors are outrageous, and some came true. The list includes such treasures as the Apple-Nintendo merger, which the article calls 'utterly outlandish,' and the persistent rumor that Apple will release Mac OS X for PC — described as 'so counter-productive and financially damaging for Apple that we doubt the company has ever seriously considered it.' There is also mention of the iPhone, which CNET says is 'an elaborate hoax dreamed up by Steve Jobs to keep journalists busy.'"

Comments

Mac OS X for the PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the criticisms of this particular rumour were spot on. Apple would have to be insane to release Mac OS X for the PC.

The distinction people miss though, is that Apple didn't release Mac OS X for the PC. They just built new Macs around an Intel CPU. That's not the same thing as releasing Mac OS X for PCs.

Re:Mac OS X for the PC

[rucs_hack]

that would pitch them into a gui arms war that they would find hard to win, and the loss could cost them dearly.

Yes Apple have always had better stuff (or so I think), but microsoft have such a huge pot of cash to mis-inform/cajole potential buyers, that they wouldn't stand a chance in direct competition. Better to let things develop as they are, with Apples hardware getting an ever larger mindshare.

Re:Mac OS X for the PC

[ArcherB]

WTF dude, you fab your own processor and motherboards? Solder your own memory?

"You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means..."

I use it meaning that I buy the parts I want and put them in the configuration I want. I do not let some engineer under pressure from marketing make those decisions for me. I use "roll my own" in the same way that I would roll my own cigarettes. I don't grow the "tobacco" and pulp wood for my own paper. I buy it all in a store in separate components and put it all together myself.

Re:Mac OS X for the PC

[ceoyoyo]

Open Office is a near impossible sell to Windows users. OO is pretty much the opposite of everything Mac users expect in their software -- it's big, slow and unpolished.

Re:Mac OS X for the PC

[Bastian]

Of course, Apple would need stringent hardware requirements at first, but things would loosen up as time passes. Remember, there were not drivers for Win95 in '95, no drivers for Win2000 in 2000, and there are few drivers for Vista now.

No offense, but your counter-example is extremely naive.

When new versions of Windows come out they include a compatibility layer that makes it possible to use drivers for older versions of Windows. Furthermore, lack of driver support isn't nearly as crippling for Windows because the vast majority of Windows sales comes from it being bundled with new hardware. It'd be much more apt to provide any other commercial PC OS out there - y'know, BeOS, OS/2, SuSE, stuff like that. There's a real example of how much of a barrier to adoption lack of drivers is.

Every successful OS manufacturer out there other than Microsoft gets around this by mostly only selling to businesses who are using it to build their own embedded systems anyway (QNX) or by bundling the OS with hardware (Apple, Sun, IBM, etc.), or by having incredibly low development costs so they don't really need to sell much of anything ot make a profit anyway (anything open source).

Every every company that has tried to sell a commercial desktop OS that runs on commodity PC hardware and was not Microsoft has failed. There is a reason for this. Apple is not a magical company. Nor are they stupid. History, as well as a cursory understanding of the issue, makes it obvious that a company would have to either have magic superpowers or be stupid to switch their OS to the general PC market out of anything but complete desperation.

Seriously, I'm sick of people talking about this asinine idea. And folks say Steve Jobs is surrounded by a relaity distortion field. Sheesh.

Caught up on names

[Bastian]

The focus of the rumor is not the name iPhone, that's just the popular name for the rumor because Apple prefixes everything with a lowercase I. The point of the rumor is the idea that Apple might make a cell phone. It'd be essentially the same rumor whether it's called the iCell, the MacPhone, the PhoneBook Pro, or even if the phone were going to be called the iChat and Apple's instant messaging client were going to just be renamed Bonjour AV or something.

Too Literal

[SuperKendall]

I actually own an "iPhone" from and it ain't Apple folks.

Yes we all know Cisco owns the 'iPhone" trademark.

However it's just as obvious Apple CAN release a phone and name it something else. The name "iPhone" is simply symbolic of a phone from Apple that can also work with the same data an iPod works with and probably have a similar interface. You are being way to literal in claiming that just because Cisco has released a phone apple cannot because one name in the vast universe of possible names is now taken...

That said I'm only about 50% sure Apple will really release a phone, and it's not just a hoax as CNet is claiming. Personally I would like a more fully featured phone that could work on an MVNO network just as Virgin Mobile phones do today (no virgin mobile phone supports Bluetooth, for example), and also a phone that synchronized better with a computer and was more seamless to use as a data connection (something you cannot get with TMobile pay as you go plans even if the phone supports it). So there is a lot Apple could bring to a phone, I just don't know if they really want to enter that market.

Re:Mixed Metaphor

[Knara]

Though attempting to avoid spoilers for Babylon 5 may be outdated at this point, I'll just point out that if the term "ancient" means the standard Minbari "A thousand years ago when Valen came", then it's entirely possible that the text could be in English, given that Valen knew English (or, at least, Earth Standard).

Re:OSX Lite for PCs

[beelsebob]

Except that by crippling it, we'll be back to the bad old days of "Don't use MacOS, it's a baby's OS, it can't do everything."

Re:Why does this idiot myth continue?

[xero314]

Comparing Apple to Microsoft and stating that apple could be competitive in the generic PC OS world, is a little short sighted, and off the mark. One of the aspects that people like about Apple products is that they work, out of the box, 100% of the time. When you turn on a Macintosh, for example, and install the OS (assuming you wanted to install a different version than it came with) you don't have to go searching for drivers and you don't have to worry about hardware compatibility issues. This is because Macs only run on a small subset of possible hardware that has been tested to work with their software.

It would be foolish for Apple to release OS X for generic hardware. OS X has remained stable and secure over the years because of Apples complete control over the hardware. You just can't do that when it is expected to run on any hardware.

Now if they wanted to release an API that could be used to develope software that could then run on any OS that supports the API, that would be another story. Then those that like the stability that comes with a OS hardware package could continue with Mac, and someone else could create an OS for generic hardware that ran the same exact applications (without out the need for seperate and/or conditional compilation).

The VERY BIGGEST OF THEM ALL

[litewoheat]

They forgot the rumor that's been around since the Apple I:

Apple is going out of business.

Control...

[SuperKendall]

So basically with all above in mind Apple WILL NOT go into cellphones since in this market they are not dictating the rules - the service provider are. Also the cellphone market is saturated so I don't really imagine what Apple can bring to it.

I agree with your basic premise (control). However, that is what makes the chances of them coming out with a phone 50/50 in my mind.

True they do not exactly control the networks, nor would they build thier own or rely only on WiMax or some other crazy scheme. However, as an MVNO they are basically paying the carriers for every minute a customer uses the network - apart from that they do not care. So apple has the ability to have more reasonable plans and better rates and charges that make sense. This is exactly why I went with Virgin Mobile for a phone.

Now the big mystery to me here is how carriers treat data traffic across in an MVNO arrangement. There's no way Apple would do an iPhone that could not do data across a network. Wuld that use simply count as minutes in an MVNO arrangement? Or would carriers even allow an MVNO such access? Virgin mobile does offer web surfing on some phones, so it might be possible.

They only thing Apple can't exactly control is quality of service, but even there if they would simply make a little better antenna that picked up signals better it would be a vast improvement over many phones today.

Obviously a Nokia or Motorola. I know you mac-heads just love your iPods and Macs but please keep in mind that there is like 1/4 of whole Earths population of cellphones out here and just a handfull of iPods and even less Macs.

Great googly moogly man, don't you realize that all of us iPod owners already have phones - including the ones you speak of?

In fact I own a RAZR. I am hard pressed to say I have had a phone I despise more - I dislike the signal reception, I dislike the interface, I really especially dislike the physical aspects of the phone as I find the buttons very hard to press correctly (preferring even much smaller buttons on other phones!) and the whole point of a clamsheel design is lost when you stupidly put buttons on the side of a phone.

I have used Nokias and they like before, but although the interface s better often again signal quality is low, the UI is not great and integration with a computer is primitive compared to what it could be if carriers were not so reluctant to allow networking outside thier own networks.

One thing alone that Apple could to do a phone is take that ear-destroying volume of the iPod and transfer it into a phone. I was trying to answer a call in the middle of Disney World recently - I might as well have been trying to listen for the oceon in a sea shell.

So please, do not talk to me about power and design and ease of use and then in the same breath bring up the maker of a phone I have almost taken a sledge hammer to and at least three seperate occasions. You may have low standards with phones, but I would like much more.