Slashdot Mirror
Apple Snags Former Xbox Exec
nandemoari sends along word that Apple has picked up Richard Teversham, a senior Executive from Microsoft's European Xbox operations, ending his 15 years of service to Redmond. Some press accounts assume that Teversham's role may lie in beefing up the games scene on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Forbes goes farther, opining that Apple "appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market." Other reporting associates the hire with Apple's recent buildout of chip-design expertise.
They didn't make the Xbox from scratch, they made it from a computer...
Sendou Wave Kick!!
the atari lynx was somewhere between an atari 800xl and an amiga. stereo sound, 4096 colors. you could flip the atari lynx's display around 180 degrees to accommodate lefties. it had networking built in so you could link up with your pals. the downside was that none of your pals HAD an atari lynx. while you were playing chips challenge or california games in full color with great sound they were playing tetris on a monochrome gameboy. was there a company more incompetent than tramiel's atari corporation?
I can see some potential here. The iPhone as a gaming platform has been proven in the market already. There are a number of small developers selling games for the iPhone. Probably not because the iPhone is a great platform, but because people are willing to pay small amounts to amuse themselves while they're on the subway or waiting somewhere, and they happen to have their iPhone on them. It's like a Nintendo DS that's smaller and you always have with you - it's a convenience thing. Game developers realized this, and the apple store made it easy to distribute products. A small bit of attention to make the device more game-friendly could make it even more attractive for developers to target this platform.
They needed someone to make the quality of their rev. A stuff even more memorable...
Hurricane Ballmer hits conference room. Scores of chairs injured and missing.
Maybe Apple will launch an attack on the console market next?! I wouldn't pout it past them, they move so quietly you don't know till it's too late! Imagine a console that is top of the line, but has all the games distributed directly to the console with Apple store, eliminating the retail and the distribution networks.
With Jobs on the sidelines, we're back to the Sculley era at Apple, where senior executives and high-level techies are hired away from competitors to make a splash in the press and foster buzz around the stealth-mode projects. And incidentally rescue some careers that may have been in trouble.
Too bad that's not what creates great products. Usually what it does is create layers of non-accountability somewhere in the clouds above where the engineers and UI designers work.
Soon everyone will have an Apple Sphere 3000, hooked up to their TV! really, i dont think i could think i could aford to upgrade my computer, xbox, playstation and an apple gaming system. P.S. i better be able to play Halo 4 on my zune
computer IS the new scratch. So is Hamburger Helper.
I think that at this point in time, Apple releasing a gaming console would make as much brand sense as IBM releasing an IBM branded gaming console.
That's what people said about Microsoft in 2001, and the newcomer's product tied Nintendo GameCube in worldwide hardware sales.
PLEASE
They don't make a difference, for every 'HOT' exec there are 10's (100's) of other brilliant people capable of doing the same thing.
Articles like this confirm the current executive manager payment scheme (overpayment by SHIT loads) that is one of the factors of the economic crisis
A new Apple patent filing reveals plans to put a red/green LED around the Home button on the iPhone for diagnostic purposes.
Marketing was one thing Microsoft did very well in the Xbox debacle. If they'd picked up any of the people responsible for quality control, I'd have been worried.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
All things aside the reality is when Microsoft created the first Xbox they (Microsoft) had already poured hundreds of millions into DirectX thus the Xbox was a no brainer. Apple on the other hand is miles behind when it comes to having a mature multi media/gaming toolset/API so I think he (Richard Taversham) will find things are not as simple over at Apple.
Unless Apple can come out with a hardware and software solution to the parallel programming crisis
They're working on it. Check out "Grand Central" and "OpenCL".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Any chance we could add some more post icons? they look kinda pretty
Now that Richard Teversham is cloaked in the RDF he no longer suffers the taint of Microsoft that many Slashdotters would otherwise sniff out.
So, because Apple's previous management dipped a toe in the water, realized their mistake and then terminated the product line, that means that shareholders like myself shouldn't criticize a multi-billion dollar disaster?
You're funny.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Linux just isn't ready for the microwave oven yet. It may be ready for the toasters that you nerds use to distribute your toasted bread and bagels across the world wide web, but the average microwave user isn't going to spend months waiting for toast to toast and then hours compiling meals so that they can get a workable graphic interface to check their food with, especially not when they already have a Windows microwave oven which does its job perfectly well and is backed by a major corporation, as opposed to Linux which is only supported by a few unemployed chefs living in their mother's basement somewhere. The last thing I want is Gordon Ramsay (haha) providing me my OS.
It was implied in the post (which I'm sure was a troll).
Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because RIM is catering to the enterprise which tends to place orders by thousands. Secondly, Blackberry has more models and is available across different carriers. Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platform with which Apple will try to branch out into different markets. Blackberry is a one-trick pony and doesn't have excellent prospects when it comes to things that don't fall within their core competency. The statistic you mentioned is the same kind of marketshare trap whereby Mac or Linux are being dismissed simply because those OSes are in single digits, often forgetting the fact that most PCs are just beige boxes inside offices that serve a single purpose. I'd like to think that 1 consumer PC which actually gets used for gaming, shopping and entertainment has more worth than 30 PCs which are locked down and offer very limited access to users (i.e. office machines)
Rather than compare monthly shipped units, a better metric is web usage. iPhone/iPod touch dominate this category.
When's the "iPhone3: Buttons" coming out?
--- Do you believe in the day?
Maybe he will show them how to design the iPhone such that it overheats and dies.
Seriously hardware wise the Xbox 360 is pretty unreliable and nothing special. Timing of the release and price was well done but not the hardware.
specifically a mac....
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Apple would be dumb to take on Nintendo in the handheld market.
A. It's been tried.
Everyone up to and including Sony has tried and failed. No one has ever taken the crown from N in portable gaming. And Sony gave it everything they had.
B. It's not possible without dedicated hardware.
So the Iphone can play games. Gee great. It has a nice screen. So did the PSP. But it doesn't have dedicated gaming inputs like the PSP had, and the PSP still failed. I remember people saying the PSP would be the one to finally take the crown, how wrong they were. The DS blew everything out of the water once again.
C. Only one screen.
When Apple starts shipping Iphones with two screens it might have a chance of competing with the DS, until then I think not.
Are developers going to create games for Iphone with the same scope of the best and richest of DS games? No. Because the market for Iphone apps is muddled. People may be buying games for the Iphone, but they sure as hell aren't paying DS-game prices for those games. They're paying a few bucks. And those games reflect it, they are curiosities-- the portable equivalent of time wasters, generally. Will Square ever release an RPG for the Iphone, I seriously doubt it. Will parent buy an Ipohone for their kid to game with? Hell no. Lacking a clam-shell alone is a massive strike on that possibility.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Every year Santa comes down my chimney. There is no other excuse for the toys being there on Xmas morning. I speak here purely from the standpoint of a guy who likes toys and cannot be swayed by your technical crap disproving the existence of elves and flying deer.
Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because *snip* Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platform with which Apple will try to branch out into different markets
Blackberry is outselling the iPhone because the iPhone is a platform Apple will use to get to other markets?
That logic is.... curious.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What's to rationalize? They put out a product, it didn't sell, they terminated it. They didn't continue down the rathole like MS did.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPHS8TjQrcc
Feel free to search Youtube for other iPhone game reviews.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You are quoting the static for one quarter when Apple beat it in other quarters. In order to get the sales record, they had a buy-one-get-one free sale according to NPD. That certainly can't last for every single quarter.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Apple launched 1 model. Didn't sell well amongst a crowded market and poor marketing and high price tag. It was cancelled after 100,000 models.
MS launches 2 models of the Xbox. Both sell moderately well but at a loss. It takes MS 5 years to make a profit. Also during that time, their last model suffers major quality control issues that causes them $1.79 billion in extra repair charges on top of the $6 billion that they have already spent. Also the small profit disappears after two quarters. At the rate of profit, it will take MS somewhere between 12-15 years just to payback the original cost.
If you were a stockholder in either company which one would you get more concerned about?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Thanks. That was partially entertaining.
Requiem for the American Dream
The Sega GameGear was way worse, that thing would suck 6 AA batteries dry in under 30 mins.
It used to annoy my friend no end when I would be playing my Gameboy every where while he had to be in the vicinity of a power outlet and have to carry the adapter around.
What Apple needed was somebody to bitch-slap the CPAs. Jobs was the Jobs for the job. And now that he's banished the beancounters to the kid's table the engineers are stepping up. And they're happy. God help you if you're competing against a happy engineer who's making good products because he thinks they're cool. Microsoft could learn a little here. Yeah, 90 hours a week is impressive brutality - but let your engineers get laid now and then and they'll make stuff that is good rather than stuff that meets spec.
Funny thing: now that the engineers are happy, the beancounters are orgasmic. Apple will pass Microsoft in Market Cap next year if current trends continue.
No doubt Apple's got some Moorestown goodness in store for next year. But except for this one quiet comment you won't see it coming, because that's how they roll in Cupertino.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Right up until here...
a homogeneous one
And that was the precise moment when I realized... you're a script. You're a good bot, but no Turing Test win for you. You need to put some typos in there and the occasional grammar error, btw.
There is nothing virtuous about "homogeneous". Quite the opposite. A general purpose computer needs a variety of special purpose circuits. The heterogeneousness (heterogeneity?) of available platforms makes a ripe field in the market for the "suitable for any problem" problem. To get to the next level of adaptability we have to embrace the heterogeneous platform in our programming environment. That way our environment will be able to adapt to the heterogeneous environments they will live in in the future. Work on this is under way.
But I'm a script too, so it's ok.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It is not common for a company to long survive the retirement or loss of its founders. Such a thing is so rare as to be a statistical anomaly. When the founders retire a company loses its purpose, its vision. The replacements chosen are almost never worthy of anything but riding the company down to its demise.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I thought the same thing, plus the following: who cares about either as an end user. "Waaa! These controllers are too similar, I'm always trying to plug the Xbox controller into the PS2 and vice versa!"
What's so bad about similar controller designs? Do you hear people complaining about how the keyboard and mouse for a PC is so similar to the keyboard and mouse for the mac? No, it makes sense that they're going to be similar, convergent evolution, good design is good design.
Too many games made for both systems? Put that another way: there were too few system exclusives for GP. Who the hell LIKES system exclusives besides the console companies themselves?!? "Woo! I don't get to play the game I want on the console I own! Awesome! Consumer choice sucks, hooray for monopolies!"
I think someone has pride in one console or the other. Which is strange, because they're things you buy, not something that should affect your identity. Then again, I don't understand people who have pride in their local sports team, and a lot of people do, so maybe I'm off here...
> A stupid Nintendo Mii ripoff
Er... that's a bit of a reach. Not that it's not a ripoff of nintendo, but really does THAT affect the quality of the console?
To use a car analogy: "This is a terrible car... muffler missing, no battery, two broken headlights, there is a barbie doll in the glove box, and the front axle is broken."
On second thought, I did miss this
Stupid and gigantic external power brick
So maybe that car metaphor should include "has one of those stupid dreamcatchers on the rearview mirror."
While you play the role of the optimist, I'll play the pessimist. I've played Quake 1 on the iPhone. It's beautiful for a 13 year old game and plays well. But it has one big problem - you have to rub your thumbs all over the display to move around. Bad guys like to hang out under your thumbs. This just doesn't work well in practice. And the accelerometer has limited use for games. There's no tactile feedback from the display, so you have to watch the placement of your thumbs in order to keep things in control. The iPhone would only be game worthy if it had some sort of docking cradle with analog sticks and buttons.
Some games will work on the iPhone, but for the majority my Nintendo DS is still going to be the first thing that I reach for.
And outside Japan the PSP is a laughing stock. Nice try, no cigar.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Yes, and the DS version sells for 2-3 times the Iphone version. Ever wonder why? And why the consumer is okay with this?
The guy in that video you linked says the Iphone version of the game is better because it is graphically superior and cheaper in cost. He clearly know little about the hand-held market and its history. Every competitor who's ever challenged Nintendo's decades long dominance of the hand-held sector has come at them with the same thing 'better looking' (though not always cheaper games, but usually more expensive hardware) and has been devastated. If the Iphone were only a gaming device it would likely suffer the same fate.
So, you may think $10 for Assassin's Creed on the Iphone is a great deal. Sure. But what if you're the publisher? You might port the game to Iphone after making it for the DS and selling it there for awhile. But what if the DS was gone and Iphone was your primary system, could you afford to sell games at $10 a pop? No. So, publishers are not going to be happy with a $10 price for a game like AC. The only reason the price is so low anyway is because Apple no doubt put pressure on them to lower the price as much as possible, and they did it to test the waters.
Lastly, the graphics are are only marginally better. The battery life is much worse. The control scheme is much worse (Iphone control scheme even takes up screen real-estate!). The durability of the Iphone is worse (no clamshell). And the cost of the Iphone itself it far, far, far higher. Children are not going to be buying it, nor teens, nor parents for children or teens. It costs more than a PS3!
I assert again, Apple has no chance of displacing Nintendo in the hand-held market with the Iphone. It will continue to be at best a secondary market, a throw-away market, while the market-share remains with Nintendo.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
But Dr Evil, thats already happened.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Did the Xbox 360 kick your girlfriend and make out with your dog?
And Sony slapped handlebars onto a SNES controller and called it a Playstation controller. But hey, you think that's bad, take a look at all these automakers blatantly plagiarizing the four wheels/two doors design.
Are you fucking high?
That's highly unlikely. The iPod Touch/iPhone market* has a lot of downward pressure on pricing coming directly from the customer base. It's a very strange market from the many articles and sales figures I've read; it seems customers are willing to buy lots of apps but they are very price sensitive. When the store was in its first few months, companies priced products like they did for other cell phones and they simply didn't get sales.
Apple contributes to the pricing pressure, but I think it's from poor design rather than intention. The App Store is both the main retail venue and the main form of advertising most apps have, and getting on either the store's front page or a category's front page makes a tremendous difference in sales -- the difference between a total failure and a success. The main way to get on the front page is to rank in the top sales, and more expensive apps are going to tend to have fewer sales. Naturally this tend to favor lower prices. The reason why I believe this is unintentional is because Apple initially didn't even think to separate out free apps from paid apps in their list of top downloads. What's more, frankly the iTunes and App Stores are terrible at helping customers find products they want or might like.
As a point of comparison, I've read that people who organized friends and followers to get their book on the top of the sales charts for Amazon ultimately didn't get a noticeable boost from it. The difference being that Amazon's site is well-designed, with a pretty good search mechanism, good methods for browsing, a decent recommendation system, and various other goodies. On the App Store you can't even limit your search to the App Store, much less to a particular category. There's no attempt to help you find apps you might like with a recommendation system, the browsing has minimal options. It's really just crap by modern standards
*While the iPhone gets all the press, the iPod Touch unit sales are roughly two and a half times more than the iPhone's.
Most big Xbox titles are like "Gears of War", "Left 4 Dead", "Dead rising" etc.
i'd have thought that would be "Objectionable content" on the iPhone?
Hell, you don't even need to be an actual console engineer to see how little Microsoft's 'hundreds of millions into DirectX' has kept the Xbox 360 from getting humiliated by the PS3's graphics this gen.
Everybody knows the PS3 has better hardware however the tendency is for PS3 games to be graphically worse than 360 games. Oh, right, you're just going to pull a No True Scotsman and claim anyone who makes his game work better on the 360 than the PS3 is not a real console developer.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
No, I simply read a head to head article on Eurogamer which showed that the PS3 games tended to use less anti-aliasing and instead ended up with some stupid blur filter. Doesn't matter how much better the PS3 is when they can't show the RESULTS for it. Of course it matters even less what kind of fringe PS3 vs 360 dickwagging people pull off when both platforms are completely crapped on by the Wii in the marketplace. Oh, wow, Killzone 2 looks good, just a shame it's being completely dominated by a game about weighting yourself. Somehow the gaming media swallowed the PS3 vs 360 red herring hook, line and sinker.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Who the hell LIKES system exclusives besides the console companies themselves?!?
Fanboys.
"Haha, told you so, $SYSTEM_X sux ass cuz on my $SYSTEM_Y I can play $EXCLUSIVE_TITLE and you can't LOL !!!1eleven!"
Congratulations to Microsoft on tying with the Nintendo Gamecube for last place in that iteration of the console wars
Second != last. GameCube and Xbox each sold twice as many units as Dreamcast.
[...] but the average microwave user isn't going to spend months waiting for toast to toast [...]
You don't toast toast. You do that to bread. ;)
[...] The last thing I want is Gordon Ramsay (haha) providing me my OS. [...]
I'm sure there is a Rachael Ray version, just for users like you!
It's flawed to point out that the iPhone is very expensive when it's a phone. The iTouch does anything else and is much cheaper, that's a better comparison.
You just got troll'd!
Actualy Tramiel was owner number three. All went down when Nolan sold Atari to Warner Brother.
Martin
I've always thought we could come up with a better term than "fanboy." What's wrong with being a fan of something? And most people who play games are guys. Anyway, I guess we're stuck with it now.
Microsoft needs about 20 Halo-sized hits to make the Xbox go profitable. I just don't see that happening, especially given that Bungie couldn't stand being part of the Empire.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
All your bases are belong to us! - Richard Teversham to Steve Jobs.
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
The price differential between the 360 and the PS3 was so great when the PS3 came out, the 360 was bound to gain traction. Parents and gamers chose the cheaper machine and developers found they could address a wider audience in less time by going 360 only - as it's easier to program for than the PS3. Better games catalogue = even more customers.
For the OP and me, the 360 is a dreadful product. I couldn't live with a 360 in the same way that I wouldn't tolerate the shortcomings of a typical budget laptop. I like my PS3 and I like my $3000 laptop. But I also recognise that I care way too much about these things and should probably get a life.
The Bandai Pippin was not made or sold by Apple, which is why the Bandai brand is there.
Bandai (the Japanese company that licensed "Power Rangers") jumped on board when Apple offered to license Mac hardware designs to third parties, along with Panasonic and Motorola and a variety of companies that either did or did not actually bring a Mac clone to market.
Most of the Mac clones were just rebranded Mac models with more RAM or a faster CPU, but Bandai wrapped it up as a game console that was more of a web-centric device. That made it more powerful in some respects than a Playstation, but also more expensive. It was also not trying to be compatible with much Mac software, so it ended up being neither fish (a basic games console) nor fowl (a cheap desktop Mac), and instead joined the ranks of middling stuff that nobody saw a reason to buy.
Suggesting that Apple designed it 15 years ago, and that it has some bearing on what Apple would release today is fantastically ignorant.
The iPhone isn't coming to Verizon.
Apple isn't losing money on the Apple TV, and certainly hasn't pumped $8billion into it.
Second year sales have jumped 3X, and the company has only ever halfassedly marketed it as a hobby.
To draw a parallel between Apple TV, a slow selling device that supports the success of iTunes against other set top boxes and services (including Microsoft's feeble attempts to enter this market) and the Xbox, which has only sold devices at huge subsidies and rang up massive hardware bills for Microsoft while only doing little to maintain Microsoft's monopoly grip on games development, is fantastically ignorant.
The death of Microsoft's Xbox 360
Dude, you keep pimping your crazy vector processing "idea" and that particular blog entry non-stop. I know I've been accused of this in the past, so this may come off as hypocritical, but cripes, learn how to not be a one-issue commenter who hijacks any story or thread to try and promote your own brand of crazy. (And just FYI, I read your "How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis" article... blog rant... whatever you want to call it. You don't articulate your ideas very well, and you don't provide a rigorous mathematical foundation for your arguments.)
Oh, and the "last century multithreaded programming model" is no less deterministic than the kind of vector processing you're promoting... unless you really abuse the definition of "deterministic" to mean only what you want it to mean. It's just that two or more threads won't run in lock-step with each other, so locking and synchronization techniques must be employed in cases where ordering is important. When you consider that some workloads naturally take longer to complete than others, or that parallel workloads may require intermediate results from each other, it's easy to see how a vector processing system that enforced the programming model you endorse would easily lead to inefficiencies of hardware utilization. Easier to program, but more profligate with use of energy, among other things.
Who is "everyone"? What makes the Xbox 360's graphics chip "better"? What definition of "better" are we using?
It's the old engineering tradeoff -- more general purpose cores or more special purpose processors that can offload certain tasks? In point of fact, while the Xbox 360 has 3 PowerPC cores which are equivalent to the single core of the Cell chip in the PS3, there are certain tasks performed by the SPEs on the Cell which all of the general-purpose cores of the Xbox chip put together couldn't execute in a reasonable amount of time. Media decoding and decompression tasks are a dream on the SPEs. (That the PS3 can fully decode both Blu-Ray and multi-channel SACD media with no effort is pretty amazing.) It's also worth noting that, while the SPEs are kind of like DSP cores, they're not nearly as specialized as some of the custom chips in previous generations of game consoles and computers.
Which is it? Does the game performance prove it, or are you relying on anecdotal evidence? Or do you mean that you believe the game performance of the Xbox 360 is better because your friends tell you? Again, who is "everyone"?
It does appear that some developers with existing code bases had an easier time porting to the Xbox 360 than to the PS3 -- I'm thinking of Orange Box specifically. Shouldn't be any surprise, since the Xbox 360 adheres more closely to a traditional development model that PC game developers have been using for years.
In short, if you care about your game console not going belly-up on you after a few months, you're probably better off with a PS3. If you want something that can be more than just a game console, you want a PS3. You can argue graphical quality all day long, though honestly the vast majority of PS3 titles look better to me than their Xbox 360 equivalents, with few exceptions. In the end, some of us care more about being able to play a game to completion without our consoles dying on us than in some retarded chest-thumping session or belonging to the biggest tribe of gamers who need external validation.
Hmm, maybe reliability is what some people mean when they say the PS3 has better hardware?
In fairness, though, it's true that PC ports are a heckuva lot easier on the Xbox 360, because of the exceedingly similar development model, compared to the PS3, which is far more ... idiosyncratic.
It's also possible that some developers were paid more to make the Xbox 360 version or port of a game superior. Or that they were paid to effectively castrate the PS3 version. (I'm looking at you, Bethesda... Not a day goes by that I don't hear one of my friends complaining about how the PS3 version of Fallout 3 is now abandonware and won't be getting the latest patches/bugfixes, never mind the exclusive content that Microsoft paid them to make for the Xbox 360.)
Guys guys. I have nothing against Apple, when it is the right thing for some people. :)
And I would not know why to have anything against gays. I mean, how in the world would they hurt me? I don't get it...
But you totally and completely fell for it. Lol. Makes it even more funny. You guys are suuuch hypocrites, my children will not believe me when I tell them in 20 years. So funny! XD
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I wouldn't say this comment is a troll. There are a lot of issues with trying to write generic source code that can be ported to any architecture or system.
There is pthreads - this allows you to create as many threads as you like, but you can't create a batch of threads in one call or bind specific threads to specific cores. You have to create them separately, with the result that in some tasks the first thread does a whole load of work, then waits for a cache reload, allowing another couple of threads to start. By the time all the work has been done, the remaining threads are created and immediately exit.
Mixing pthreads with C++ is a bit tricky, and you have to watch out for the 128 cache page boundary issue with structures and class objects.
OpenMP is the default standard for multi-processor systems, but you have to design your program around the calls to send and receive data, which may seem to be a bit of an overhead when all the processors are on the same desktop system.
OpenCL seems to be resolving a lot of these issues, like trying to end the distinction between embedded system API's and desktop/server API's.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Whoa. Is the current QWERTY keyboard really a good design? A Standard, yes, but a good design? Think about that for a second.