Apple Reportedly Considering Huge Investment In Twitter

The NY Times reports that Apple has internally discussed an investment into Twitter to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. From the article: "There is no guarantee that the two companies, which are not in negotiations at the moment, will come to an agreement. But the earlier talks are a sign that they may form a stronger partnership amid intensifying competition from the likes of Google and Facebook. Apple has not made many friends in social media. Its relationship with Facebook, for example, has been strained since a deal to build Facebook features into Ping, Apple's music-centric social network, fell apart. Facebook is also aligned with Microsoft, which owns a small stake in it. And Google, an Apple rival in the phone market, has been pushing its own social network, Google Plus. 'Apple doesn't have to own a social network,' Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said at a recent technology conference. 'But does Apple need to be social? Yes.'"

Comments

How about they improve the Finder instead?

[mfearby]

With Apple's huge pile of cash they could shell out a few bucks to improve their file manager. It's a child's toy compared to what it should have evolved into by now. The path bar is something so sad that even I could have designed it. The dock is nasty, too. And they could add some preference options for people who come from normal computing backgrounds -i.e., ones where the Home and End keys actually move to the beginning and end of the current line. Gee, that'd be awesome, wouldn't it? It won't even cost much, either. But will Apple lift so much as a finger to even consider improving what they already have in lieu of dreaming up more shiny to distract users from the fact that some aspects of their OS have been crappy from day one??? Nope. Because they're utterly hopeless. I'll stick to my Linux, thanks.

Re:How about they improve the Finder instead?

[mfearby]

Apple prided themselves on making computing easy, but to release a file manager and then never improve upon it, and to expect users to write Apple Scripts (what a stupid language *that* is!) or to fire up a Terminal (Oh no, the most unholy of unholies on a Mac OS, using a command-line!), is something I will never understand. Apple seem to be hell-bent on NEVER improving the Finder. Path Finder isn't much chop, either. It still offers the "Replace" button instead of merging folders like normal operating systems do. The writing is on the wall for the Mac OS, anyway. Just like Ubuntu has done with Unity, GNOME have done with GNOME 3, and Windows will soon do with 8, these morons seem to think that tactile input devices are going to wiped from the face of the earth and made a crime to possess, because they're all making it progressively more difficult to use computers. Thank god for the likes of KDE (which I have recently re-adopted).