Slashdot Mirror
Schiller Says Apple Is the Last PC Maker From the Mac Era, Forgets About HP
An anonymous reader writes "Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, recently claimed that Apple is the only computer company left from the early days of the Mac. Unfortunately for him, HP still exists. "Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," Schiller told Macworld in an interview on Apple's Cupertino campus. 'We're the only one left.' I'm sorry Apple, but when exactly did HP declare bankruptcy? We contacted an HP spokesperson for a statement on Apple's ridiculous claim and were pointed to its timeline history page."
Woz is alive. Jobs has passed.
They just split the company yet again, and the electronics test/measurement operations (the descendant of the original HP business) got rebranded as "Keysight Technologies":
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...
A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs. Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Panasonic were Japanese electronics manufacturers making MSX-based personal computers in 1983 before the Mac was released and they're still manufacturing PCs today.
I can think of a couple of other manufacturers who are still going, and were producing machines at the the time of original Mac. One of these is a major name, another is obscure, even in it's own country. The first is of course Toshiba, who were producing CP/M systems in 1980, if not earlier. The other is the British manufacturer Research Machines, who produce exclusively for the UK educational sector. Their RM 380Z, another CP/M box, appeared in 1977. RM are still producing PCs for education today, but I believe that they will soon be moving out of hardware whilst continuing with their software and support services.
Sony Viao L-series all-in-one desktops PCs.
http://www.sony.co.uk/product/...
Fujitsu (no longer Fujitsu-Siemens) Esprimo desktop PCs.
http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/prod...
Panasonic tablet-based PCs running Windows 8.1
http://www.panasonic.com/busin...
Schiller's wrong, but HP isn't the company which exists from that era. It's Compaq, they just call themselves HP.
IBM don't make PCs any more
That's funny, because I see them selling workstations and tower servers. Those are PCs.
Dell started 8 years after Apple (and after the Mac)
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PC's Limited while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.
Acer started 13 years after Apple (and after the Mac)
The Micro-Professor MPF-I, introduced in 1981 by Multitech (which, in 1987, changed its name to Acer)
NEC don't make PCs any more
Really?
Sony made their first PC 7 years after Apple (and after the Mac)
Really?
Cray never made PCs
"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone"
Fujitsu only started making PCs 14 years after Apple (and after the Mac)
In 1954, Fujitsu manufactured Japan's first computer, the FACOM 100, and in 1961 launched the transistorized FACOM 222.
FM-7
IBM just announced Lenovo is purchasing the server business, so... that correction is false at least. The Dell one is too, since Dell started in late 1984, nearly a year after the first mac shipped.
The rest check out. The MSX is of particular note, as it's the platform (MSX2) where the Metal Gear videogame franchise started. Unfortunately, most people are more familiar with the later NES port. It was a pretty terrible port with much more primitive graphics and lots of important stuff removed, like, say, the actual metal gear the game is named after.
The company I worked for back then owned five of them. So I can tell you without a doubt that it was nor just a concept piece.
The only non standard part Apple use is the motherboard, everything else is pretty much standard parts, memory, HDD, CPU's, GPU's etc are all stock standard parts available in whatever flavour machine you want Apple or not.
That's not true. They usually use modified versions of standard components. The current MacBook Pro has the RAM and SSD soldered onto the motherboard, and while the CPU is standard it has a custom connector and cooling system that has forced enough physical differences in the chip that it cannot be replaced. Most macs these days don't even have a GPU, they rely on intel's latest integrated ones which are finally pretty decent.
The Mac Pro is the only model Apple sells with fully standard CPU... but the GPU is non-standard, it's made by AMD but is a weird hybrid of two different GPUs that AMD sells, and Apple is the only company who can use it... one of the two GPUs in the mac pro even has a socket on it so you can plug in a bloody PCIe SSD card. On the GPU! They ran out of PCIe lanes on the processor, so the SSD has to share the lane of the second GPU which is actually a sensible choice since it's highly unlikely you will be maxing out the PCIe card (1.5GB/second) at the same time as doing serious computations on the GPU. That definitely is not a standard part.
On iOS apple builds everything themselves, they are famously known to have over 1,000 engineers working on just the CPU for the iPhone. They haven't gone that far with the mac but it's standard procedure to take components from other companies like AMD and Intel and Qualcomm but then modify to suit their own needs.
And this is why Slashdot needs a "Wrong" moderation.
a) The quote was specifically "computers", not "PC's"
b) He mentioned HP....but you conveniently ignored that one.
c) Sony made it's first computer (a PC even) in 1982, before the Mac
d) NEC still makes computers (servers)
e) Acer was making PC's in 1983, before the Mac
f) Fujitsu made computers in 1954, and PC's in 1981, before the Mac
But yeah...you were right about IBM & kinda right about Dell (though it could be argued it was just a rename of his PC's Limited...which started in 1984), so I guess 2 out of 8 is a good day for you....