Slashdot Mirror
Disney to buy out Apple?
This is a total rumor, but it is interesting to think
about.
Bart van der Ouderaa writes "
There is talk about a buyout of Pixar by Disney. While this
isn't really that suprising, Steve Jobs is rumored to
have pitched Apple as well. According to the article, Disney
is going to buy both Pixar and Apple in a multi-billion dollar
deal. In this deal CEO of Disney Eisner would be stepping down
( for medical/personal reasons and becomming chairman of the board
at disney) while Steve Jobs would become CEO of Disney. Details
are expected this week. Will the next iMac feature two giant ears ? "
Macs are the disneyland of computers
or a Goofy G3 ?
or a Minie Mac palmtop?
Evil Disney. This is bad. Actually any incursion by the demon company is bad.
... A cute G3 with ears?
Yep, look out for a sharp rise in Apple sales due to Pestering Power...
Whos the Leader of the pack thats made for you and me
M-I-C-K-E-Y A-p-p-l-e
Mickey MAC!!! with g3
Mickey MAC!!! with g3
maybe now apple can make some cash CASH CASH
All you little mousekateers and little linux hacks
Run around, scream real loud. "we want our MouseMac's Fast!!!
-Stan Shivell
Whatever happened to Wozniak? That guy was a real crackerjack. I imagine if there ever was a Apple computer made from 1 chip, it should be called an iWoz.
Bet he's still teaching school. I hope he still has some of the money he made from Apple. He sure is a swell.
Actually, this rumor has been floating around for months, particularly at Robert Morgan's Apple RFI. I'm more jazzed about /. gettin' hip to the new logo look.
Big MAC with double G3 !!!
...cause then you will post articles like this one.
Disney is Satan on Earth. The Southern Baptists have boycotted all Disney related products.
I forsee Apple losing market share in the important Southern Baptist market...
Wait. No one cares about them...
And Stan Lipman as well
Apple always targeted schools, and now with the iMac which is a kid's computer (hint. all kind of kids colors) well Disney got interested of course.
The deal is more then a simple rumor.
When you cut and paste from other websites you should atleast give the source credit if your not going to retype what you take.
The Disney/Apple rumor is from www.appleinsider.com Go there for the FULL story and text. And remember. it's a rumor. Same as that Sun was buying apple 3 years ago. And that Apple is going broke (Once a year since day 1)
Sheesh.
Actually IBM made the Jaguar, or at least huge parts of it. Jaguar QA/QC was probably pretty good :)
it says "disney" all over it
I'm not sure if Jobs would make a good CEO over at the House of Mouse, but it might be worth it if he turns ABC five-colors a la the iMac. On the other hand, if the entire Mac line goes all-yellow, we're screwed.
BTW, the monochromatic Apple logo is possibly the lamest thing Jobs has done since taking over. Rob, would you please go back to the six-color icon, as God (and Woz) intended it to be?
I really like the new bondi apple logo. Keep it! Although it might be neat to use the same logo w/ the 6 colors(the old one was flat, this one looks more 3d-ish).
Yes, I was one of the early app. developers on the ST (any-
one remember HabaWriter? Please don't shoot me:-)). What
I recall is that not only was GEM/TOS buggy when it first came
out, but that they never made any effort to fix the bugs.
I later tried porting my software to GEM running over DOS on
a PC. It was rock-solid, and even performed reasonably well
on my old 8088 XT clone, so I concluded that the twits at
Atari had just done a lousy job of porting it.
Actually, it wasn't Digital (the manufacturer) who did GEM; it
was Digital Research, Inc. (DRI), the same people who did
DR-DOS (now OpenDOS, owned by Caldera). And although
they licensed GEM to Atari, they should be blamed for the
mess that Atari made of it, because GEM on the PC was, in
my experience, extremely reliable.
DRI did not stop supporting GEM, which was far better than
Windows at the time. But they couldn't compete with MS's
OS monopoly, and went into a fatal decline, ending with
a buyout by Novell. The remains were then sold a few years
ago to Caldera.
Digital Research killed GEM, not Atari. They killed it because of a look-and-feel lawsuit brought forth by that paragon of virtuous companies, Apple. Microsoft had nothing to do with it, although you should probably thank Microsoft for its efforts in a lawsuit that essentially removed Apple's threat to the growing GUI market. If Apple had succeeded, you'd have to continue using twm as your X-windows manager. :-)
...The most popular theme park franchise in the world, as well as the most porfitable theme park in the world.
I guess you are right.
Harry
The only way I could rationalize it in my mind would be if this was Jobs' big revenge move to get richer at the expense of apple. Apple is all about Thinking Different and Disney is 100% old school conventional thinking.
Sun, Oracle, anybody, don't let Disney buy Apple!
The top exec's from Pixar & Disney animation work very closely together, and top people from each of these companies have weekend getaway estates in Eugene, Oregon which have locked gates at the ends of the long driveways. All the dynamics for these two companies, with Apple in tow, to merge, are in place. It will make them richer, give them more power, and scare the living Jesus out of Microsoft if it happens. Those are pretty tempting apples in the garden of eden. Disney bought ABC, didn't it? They have lots of reasons to do this. If it happens, Jobs will make TONS of money, and it will all come from you and me, without our consent being an issue.
This rumor is as old as the hills. It's been going around since before Jobs resumed control of Apple. As for Jobs' skills as a manager... Pixar seems to be doing rather well, and he's resurrected Apple. Seems like maybe Disney shareholders would be better served by him than Eisner.
Might be in all the intellectual property from Apples R&D Labs. Remember Apple spent a fortune on R&D over the years and there may be quite a few gems tucked away here & there that may be irrelevant to the new apple but quite useful to some mega multi media conglomerate.
For instance remember that the origins of the iMac was as a gaming machine and set top box (for advanced digital cable applications). Disney may have concluded that to be a player in the future they will need to own, or be a player in, the set top box market space.
And, FWIW, I can't imagine Alan Kay & crew being totally unproductive during their stay at Apple (and MIT media labs).
Can we please leave the wildly speculating Apple rumours to chumps like Mac the Knife and Skinny DuBps? Please, Rob, cut the rumourmongering...
Since when has Slashdot been run by journalists anyway? This is news for nerds, by nerds themselves. If you want shoddy journalism, go read the Times.
And people are scared of Y2K?!?!?
This could easily cause armageddon...much more so than Y2K
Either Macs would become even fruitier or Disney would try to make their movies playable on only their projectors...
800,000 iMacs in less than 6 months.
Jobs has done some great marketing, and even a few great things with computers (the Macintosh itself, to start with -- though somewhere along the way [after Jobs left, I gather] "the computer for the rest of us" managed to turn itself into "the computer for the few, the proud . .
Look, I've got fond feelings for Apple (though I don't happen to use Macs very often), but there's no excuse for blind adoration here. For starters: I'm optimistic, too, but 800,000 iMacs isn't going to change the industry and rescue Apple from oblivion. 8,000,000 would be nice for a start. If they really want to get somewhere, they should take a long close look at Be and port the MacOS to Intel. Done right, that would require little more of their developers to support both Intel and PPC than recompiling. I have to have a windoze box at home because I do contract programming on the side, but for all other purposes I boot into Linux or BeOS. I'd be delighted to invite the MacOS aboard too -- collect 'em all, kids! Why not? My girlfriend is a Mac fiend and she'd do the same. We're not the only ones.
Apparently more than you do.
Explain to me again how my knowledge affects his? Then explain how his knowledge of computers affects his skill at marketing or managemnt . . . Finally, explain how he suddenly (and silently) transmogrified into a C++ programmer after 25 years in marketing and management.
I don't know if it's GEM, or TOS or the hardware on the Atari ST that is unstable, but bombs (GEM on Atari drew little black bombs across the center of the screen when a fatal exception occurred. The number of bombs was == to the exception #) appeared quite often.
A few years ago, a friend showed me his Atari Falcon, and all I can remember was that he was hitting the reset button every three seconds on average, so it got worse instead of better.
. . . come on! the apple II was groovy as all hell for what it was (i wrote me first code on them things), but the Mac was the future. it still would be (grrr!) if they'd done any work on it after 1985 or so.
anyway, in the early days Apple the company was both jobs and wozniak. w/o either one of those two, it wouldn't have gone anywhere.
:)
Someone has fallen for the old trick. Every week, someone has some new "rumor" about who is going to buy apple. Every 2 months it's someone else. APPLE WILL NEVER BE SOLD (willingly)! You should have figured that out by now, but like most ignorant peons, none of you bother to actually research the history.
oh, man, that is good . . . very good. i salute you!
The thing that Disney needs and lacks is "Walt Disney", the personality that gives the company a face... creative yet safe for the kids... Saddly for Apple, Jobs could do that job very well...
As for management, he'll be surrounded by people who can manage just fine. He'll be their front man, "the idea of a CEO", not necessarily the reality. (Much like "Ronald Reagan" who played President as much as he actually was President.)
Jobs is a showman, and what could Disney need more. Too bad for Apple.
I would think so also unless it was any other person then
steve jobs running the show.
im not sure, but i think DK broke up first, if i remember DRI went all heavy metal before breaking up a few years later
-greg
...and don't forget Firewire which will be the professional and home video connection protocol of the future. Disney stands to benefit from owning Apple in a BIG way.
--
Ted
carolynted@earthlink.net
5 consecutive quarters of profit.
Increase in shipped units over a year ago.
PC makers imitating the iMac.
Woz is the best. He is a genius, a humanitarian, and a first class human being. The Apple II really was a computer for the people. It changed my life in 1972. I can't belive I just popped up his cam site and there he is, checking his email on a laptop... when I grow up I want to be just like Woz...
And Linux has what % of the desktop market share?
Percent market share is _not_ an indicator of quality
Asbestos: I like Linux alot, but Mac is supreme for an easy-to-use desktop environment.
At least he's not a pissed off OS/2 user!
OS/2 sucks! - everyone
a kinda semi-transparent shorts for Mickey? :>
All I can say is, there are more likely events than that. Like Bill Gates retiring and giving all his money to Sally Struthers. Like most good rumors, it sees a connection and makes it stronger than the obvious factual conflicts. First off, Pixar and Apple, besides being headed by THE Man, are entirely different companies. Jobs couldn't pitch either entirely too well without being assasinated. Apple is HIS company, but he answers to a lot of people, whereas he runs Pixar, but basically he just gets his ass out of the way and lets the great artists work. Considering Sun and Ellison both tried and failed to bite the Holy Apple when they were down, whereas now there's no end in sight now for profitable quarters...
I'd see antitrust in Disney buying Pixar, as funny as that sounds for the techno-toons industry. They certainly have the muscle to take it over, since I seem to remember Pixar's quarterly earnings being only in the teens of millions. But think about how high-profile a buyout it would be, bad, bad press. Ironically, I think Jobs would be a hell of a Disney CEO for the new millenium type of entertainment. It would finally give him a battleship big enough to go Monitor and Merrimac with the other Pirate of Silicon Valley.
No Offense, but some of you guys may be great programmers and computer users, but you don't know jack about running a company (or reading a full article at that)
Right now apple is living on money generated by its sales, which is why it is turning out machines tah are fast very fast, but not spending the time to make a bit line (a unified motherboard). In other words, for apple to cut expenses to the point where it is profitable in its current market, it must sell computers all based on the same basic motherboard (that is why there are 3/4 pci slots in the new G3's, and the imac and powerbook motherboards are extremely similar).
But if apple and pixar are bought up by disney (who i believe has tons of money, oddles, if they sell as many of those hat's as I think)they will definatly become subsidised but fully independent branchs of the company, which means that they can all dip into the massive funds disney generates, for their own purposes (IE spending money on R&D and making nwe factories, to offer a wider range of computers etc.). I highly doubt that steve jobs, who is a very competant business person and who currently is not being paid by apple, will complete rework both pixar and apple to fit the disney image, because he is already the ceo of two of them, if he becomes ceo of disney, which in turn owns apple and pixar, he gets a nice package with a nice big expense account for his two babies (pixar and apple(also next but that is apple)).
-Rant Off-
Have nice Day
These are just rumors and don't have any sound foundation. Read this URL to know why
http://www.pelagius.com/AppleRecon/
There's an interesting commentary about the mega merger rumor by another individual at the URL below:
http://www.pelagius.com/AppleRecon/
The above URL points to a news site for investors called RFI. The RFI site basically says that the rumored merger is not going to happen. Note that although the RFI author writes with an authoritative and confident tone, that author is not necessarily correct in what he says; he's an analyst who works off of inside tips, just like the Apple Insider site authors. Still, it's an interesting read.
Jack Tramail started it. They always had cool machines and lousy marketing. The polar opposite to MS.
Actually, I'm pretty sure DRI's still around. They put out a new album (Full Speed Ahead) a year or two ago.
If it wasn't for the fruitarian Jobs the original Apple computer would have never seen the light of day outside of the users group.
Besides, I think the Apple ][ had a fine run. It was time for the future, and where was Woz then?
It's rather difficult to imagine Steve Jobs being the embodiment of the Disney image. If this deal does work out as described in the header, watch for Disney stock to plummet.
the scary thing is, I can believe it.
:->)
Steve Jobs is one smart, scheming S.O.B.
(but a lousy manager.. guess I should sell Disney short...
i started checking the date for april-firstness right around where it said that jobs would become CEO of disney. that's absurd.
and if the rest is true, it's probably not so good. wtf does disney know about computers? heh. OTOH, wtf does jobs know . . .
...that Alan Kay is currently Disney's VP for Research and Development? He and most of the team that created Smalltalk all work for Disney, in the ir 'Imagineering' department. There's a reason why Squeak, their new & improved cross-platform Smalltalk extension, has a mouse for a logo, even if it IS open-source.
I can see a "Disney Mac" in the future, to replace those palmtops that Apple used to have (do they still have them?) You know some really stupefyingly simple computer that a kindergartener could use. I'm sure if Disney was behind it, everybody but the Southern Baptists would buy one.
Can't see Jobs as CEO of Disney. I'm sure he'd be damn good at it though.
Uhh, the new iMac'ish Apple logo sucks. The colored striped logo was good enough for twenty years, and I don't see why it shouldn't be good enough for another twenty. It looks better too.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well then slashdot needs to use the real logo instead of the lame blue case design logo.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by XDVDLA:
It sounds pretty reasonable for Disney to buy out Pixar because it played a pretty large role in producing "Toy Story" and "Bugs Life". To buy out Apple, on the other hand, sounds if Job's just adding the company in just as an illogical bonus....basically, it doesn't sound right for a computer company to be bought just because the CEO is going to sell the his other company aswell (in this case, Job's second company, Pixar). In short, what does Apple have to do with it?
Hence the question remains "Disney can make use of Pixar, but what is Disney going to do with Apple?"
If this is true however (i doubt it) just as long as Apple shipps out their new iPowerBooks, G4's, and MacOS X in the future, it's pretty much cool with me...just as long nothing changes....other than that....i'm a little skeptical about it... oh yeah and one more thing...an imac with big ears? HAHHAHAA! Actually that would be pretty cool/weird if the ears could flap open so that they can act as speakers...
Posted by Mike@ABC:
You gotta be kidding me. Eisner is the 400 lb. gorilla here. IF he were interested in buying Apple (which, by the way, is only a small portion of the larger Internet market he's trying to capture with Go Network), he'd probably keep Steve Jobs in place at most, or send him packing if he starting making CEO noises.
Disney owning Apple is like NBC buying a TV camera manufacturer. It doesn't make sense.
Koppel, the Sports Babe, Dennis Prager, Mo Vaughn, Bill Nye, Paul Kariya, and the iMac, all under the jurisdiction of interim-CEO-for-life Steve Jobs?
Will this get me a Linux QuickTime client any faster, dammit?
- Not Enough Coffee Man
--
--
=8^
Can happen, once Intel embeds each of us with PIIIs. But who will pay them? Could it be... hmmm... SATAN?
--
--
=8^
For those who don't recall, Warner Brothers owned Atari at the height of the video game craze where Atari was number one. Because they really didn't understand computers, Atari is a nothing company today. (this isn't entirly true, Warner Brothers got rid of atari in the mid 80s, and those who took it over deserve credit for all their bone headed moves too)
Diseny is a big company, but I don't believe they can manage a large computer company as well as the rest of their empire. I could be wrong.
Let me call my broker to sell my shares of Apple, after all they are high, and If I'm right they won't go higher.
Hi broker, its bluGill.
I'd like to seel everything I've got in Apple
What?
Oh, I forget, I never had Apple, stupid move, I should have bought in 95. Sorry for wasting your time.
So there you have a full discloser from me.
Yeah, right. Pack another bowl...
PC clone maker buys Digital
Crappy BBS service buys Netscape
Amusement park company buys Apple
what next?
What is happening to all the hip, cool & geeky companies?
Jón
Funny this happened on the same day some guy released a low level Quicktime library for Linux. Combined with Microsoft's monopoly, that must have been the straw the broke Apple's sanity.
Funny this happened on the same day some guy released a low level Quicktime library for Linux:) Combined with Microsoft's monopoly, that must have been the straw the broke Apple's sanity.
Steve Jobs has been CEO of some Mickey Mouse companies before, but this takes the cake!
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Give me a break, people. For one thing, Jobs is only an interim CEO - he still answers to the board. Second, it would destroy Apple. Apple is a brand name - their name is what sells computers. And what would Disney do with Apple anyway?
This is just another example of Slashdot's lack of journalistic integrity. Slashdot is just a bunch of momos with a keyboard and a web server.
--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
And if some of you would stop bashing Jobs and Disney for a moment, you'd see the logic.
Disney has been looking for a new CEO, since Eisner wants to scale back his job for health reasons. But Disney needs a visionary for a CEO, not the sort of egomaniacal bean-counter that is the mainstream CEO. Jobs is one of the great visionaries of American business (whether or not you agree with his vision), and is an effective fiscal officer as well (see the Apple turnaround).
The Pixar buyout is obvious, the Apple buyout less so. But think on these factors: first, Disney might want to get into the computer industry. It's a diverse company, and has hired some of the greatest living minds of the industry (Alan Kay, Danny Hillis, etc) just to have visions. The only existing computer company with the right cachet for Disney is Apple. Face it, Disney wouldn't just sell beige Wintel boxen. They've been toying with portals, but a unique and friendly PC is more, well, Disney. That's the modern Mac.
Second, and more importantly i think, they would own Quicktime. There's a lot of thought going on in Hollywood now about digital distribution of theater-grade films - digital media that rivals 70mm film in quality. Distributing 70mm reels is a HUGE expense. Digital media would be smaller, much cheaper to manufacture, and effectively immune to wear. And Moore's Law pretty much guarantees that it *will* be technically feasible within a few years. Whoever gets the technology to market first, and has the best backing, stands to make *billions* in distribution.
Apple's Quicktime is the best video compression technology currently available, and barring a surprise technical breakthrough, will remain so for years to come. And it may scale size/resolution well enough for film-quality video, given a good storage mechanism. This technology (and other Apple tech), combined with Disney's industry presence and marketing savvy, could put Disney in control of a key choke point for the entire film industry.
Stop thinking like a bunch of obsessive Anonymous Cowards and start thinking like Disney stockholders. This makes sense.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Let's see now, if all the rumors are to be believed, how many times has Disney tried to buy out Apple now? Three? I don't think it'll happen this time either.
By the way, nice new Apple icon.
What happens. It can be a good thing from my point of view.
I just Hope, mister jobs won't be CEO anymore because I Want to see BeOS running on a Dual G4 altivec powered machine. BeOS is suppose to be The media OS , G4 is the media chip. so lets hope DIsney will help Be --
none Yet.
I was in a Microcenter this weekend, and I wandered through the Apple room. There were gobs of elementary school kids climbing ALL OVER the iMacs. They would crawl on top of an iMac box to play with one of the iMacs set up on display. I swear, the kids thought of them as playground equipment. And they were clicking around, exploring the systems' desktops too. Maybe brightly colored "cute" computers are the key to getting kids into technology.
wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.
--Lenny
Pixar and Disney are obviously a good fix. Apple and Disney are less so. Disney's business has always been to create and distribute creative content. The compiuter business is completely different from this. A partnership with Apple is more likely.
Steve Jobs is a great CEO for Apple. He is one of the great visionaries of the 20th century. But I think he is a poor fit for Disney.
Actually, I'd be surprised if this is true. Sounds like a lot of pants to me.
I was WONDERING when /. would start using the new monochrome Apple logo..
.5 Mb color ST sold for. GEM wasn't perfect, but it was way ahead of Windows. GEM ended up sucking because Digital stopped maintaining it, some say because of Microsoft pressure (Digital had given up on CPM/GEM and was selling PC's now..)
Back OT, I was a HUGE Atari fan from the time of the Atari 400 all the way to 1990, when I had to get a PC for schoolwork (a Mac wasn't even considered because of the price tag at the time).
I lay 100% of the responsibility for Atari at Jack Trammiels feet. They had a few good ideas, the best of which was delivering the most power at the most price, so you had to be plain dumb to prefer a PCjr, which still cost twice what a
But in the end the Trammiels just leeched off Atari enthusiasm and stopped innovating. They kept marketing to an absolute min. and skimmed the rest. They kept promising vaporware, and delivered something as horrible as the Jaguar. The jag would have been cool if they delivered it on time, but they chose cheapie Korean manufacturing which delivered non-working systems, setting back launch. Because the Jag was a cart system, and Atari was so stingy, they only sent games to magazines as LOANERS which had to be returned, which was then sent to the next magazine (does anyone see the sense in sending a cart to a game writer 2 months AFTER release? Who reviews old news unless it's a huge hit?). It wasn't TW that killed Atari, it was arrogant management... Amiga owners can also relate to this I am sure.
If these managers were not so petty and greedy, they could have provided competition to Windows even today, protecting some of us from the evil sheriff Bill. PC's may be everywhere today, but the it's only in 1999 do you see $400 E-machines. Atari was providing cheap yet still modern machines 15 years ago, and had JT been aggressive and took outside investment at Atari's peak, they could still be around...
Then again, if we weren't stuck in this current Microsoft Purgatory, and things were a little better -- would as many people be picking up the Linux banner. There's always a silver lining to a mushroom cloud...
I don't know if the iMac itself should feature mouse ears, but certainly it ought to be considered for Mickey's Mouse. Think of all the marketing tie-ins with Disney owning Apple... You can finally have that Lion King iMac, straight from the source.
>Disney is Satan on Earth. The Southern Baptists >have boycotted all Disney related products.
You may wish to distinguish between the SoBaps
and the Southern Baptist Convention (official mouthpiece which started the boycott). Many
SoBaps are not part of the SBC, and more than
a few are happy to have left, now that pig-headed Falwellesque zealots have run the show for 20 years.
And Disney didn't sweat the boycott; it
never had to. "Important Southern Baptist market"? That's like saying Folger's is quaking
in their loafers over the Mormon disdain for
coffee. The SBC is as serious a threat to
Disney as Rev. Falwell is to the Teletubbies.
Funny thing, though: one thing that Disney and
Apple have in common is the fact that they don't
buckle in to pressure from social conservative cop-types so easily. (Remember when Apple built their Austin TX facilities? Some powerful locals were upset about Apple's domestic partners benefits program, and threatened the company with
revoking building permits. The response from Cupertino was "okay, go ahead. We can still relocate." The locals saw the light
after that.
I have my own problems with the Mouse (a.k.a.
"Schmaltz R Us"), but not here. Nice to see
someone in corporate America with guts.
-----
".sig,
>And what would Disney do with Apple anyway?
Market the hell out of it.
Apple has one of the most recognized (and
recognizable) names/logos on the planet.
And Disney is, 1st and foremost, a
marketing machine.
I think the whole deal, if true, is dubious,
but not this particular aspect. It
actually make sense from a mktg. viewpoint.
Very spooky.
-----
".sig,
Now we know why the iMac looks like it was designed by a cartoonist.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've always thought the Mac was something of a Mickey Mouse computer...
________________________
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
Will disney start bastardizing computer myths and folklore into sappy children's movies now?
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
Southern Baptists to Boycott iMac
Apple Rolls Out Another Mickey-Mouse Computer
Goofy Errors Found in OSX
0 1 - just my two bits
This would be an amazing coup for Steve.
You can say what you want about him, but with Pixar, he has proven that he can run an entertainment company. Disney must know that the future of the types of films it makes is 100% CGI.
In fact you could argue that it is time for a real CG-film heavyweight to push the field even further - CG films could be a trillion dollar industry in twenty years.
Steve rescued Apple and made Pixar into a real force in entertainment. Is he the CEO of the century? Maybe.
And yet you don't back up your own comments with the integrity of your post.
It is a rumor.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
Before the Squeak team moved to Walt Disney, Squeak was a research project at Apple. In fact, all Squeak development is still done on Macs. I guess Squeak may be moving back to were it originally started.
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
It figures... The computer for the rest of them always has been a Mickey Mouse© computer in the first place...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
Not that absurd. I mean, until his "riding to the rescue" of Apple, he was busy turning Pixar from a software company (anyone remember Pixar Typestry? I still have a copy...) into a movie studio. So, heading up a movie/multimedia conglomerate would hardly be out of character for him. I always thought he was more showman than techie.
What puzzles me is, what the heck would a Disney do with an Apple computer It's not like Disney needs it's own brand of computer (the iMickey!?). I suspect if they do get Apple, they are going to try to squeeze it into a niche market, like just education or just "a kid's computer." It seems to me that Apple just barely survived it's niche trap last time. Putting its foot back into the bear trap at this point would be colossaly dumb.
As far as I remember, Digital Research never did sell PCs. I think you're mixing up Digital Equipment, a hardware company, with Digital Research, a software concern.
:-(. Anyone buying a Jack T product would know exactly what he was in for. I suspect that's one reason for the companies' fates.
I remember the Commodore 64, one of the ghastliest computers made. Not exactly known for quality
D
Actually, early Mac models did have a chip called the Integrated Woz Machine (IWM for short).
I think it's fascinating to see the different directions that both Jobs and Woz have chosen.
Actually, Warner ran Atari (and the entire videogame business) into the ground, and Tramiel just stepped on the pieces that were left.
Warner is responsible for various genius moves such as the 5200 (Atari 400 + slightly incompatible + no keyboard + shitty joysticks), massive ET marketing tie-ins. (There is some giant landfill full of ET The Extra Terrestial games out in the desert somewhere.), and flooding the market with a mass of overpriced rotten games - leading to the market crash of 1984.
The 400 & 800 computers predate Warner and are from the orginial Nolan Bushnell Atari.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Don't be knocking the Dead Kennedys!
Gag.
What would they do to poor Charles Babbage?
Or Alan Turing?
Anybody read 'Titan' by Stephen Baxter? He talks about MicroDisney. AppleDisney aint quite so scary. (Even if it is bull)
- These are small, *those* are _far away_
Just what we need, Jerry Falwell looking for obscene patterns on circuit boards.
I can hear it now: Those COLORED computers are evil, they're good for nothing and lazy. Buy these nice, baige computers. These here, the ones powered by the K-K-Katmai chip, with the serial number! The LOOOORRRRRRD has so ordered!
Bah! Companies that have little or nothing to do with each other, should not merge. Pixar I can understand, but Apple itself? It's like MicroSoft and Pfizer joining. Hmmm.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Dell you should have bought in 95.
Now, about those properties: Pixar is trivially obvious. Apart from the fact that Disney uses quite a few Macs, I don't see a compelling case for them owning Apple. Then again, I don't see GM owning EDS, either. I predict that, if this deal actually comes to pass, The Mouse will buy Apple to make Steve happy, then sell it off in a couple of years.
Disclaimer: I own stock in both Disney and Apple. And if Red Hat ever goes public, you can bet I'll buy a piece of them, too.
I've won some, I've lost some. If you're afraid of losing, make a small, regular investment in an S&P 500 index fund. After 25 years, you'll probably have a fortune.
Jack Tramiel was the guy who ran Atari into the toilet. He was the '80s king of vaporware, both at Commodore and Atari, long before Bill Gates inherited the title. His slogan was "Business is War" which meant, usually, war with his customers.
;-)
Not only that, but his Atari ST computers were not very reliable (I owned 2 of them) while the old Warner-era Atari 800 was probably the best of the 8-bit machines (mine still works after 17 years).
Don't know whatever happened to him or his sons. Maybe they're the guys in charge of public and government relations at Microsoft.
*sigh*
As usual, many people here missed the most important part of that whole article. Apple and Pixar with both be INDEPENDENT subsidaries of Disney. This means that the companies will probably operate much as they do today. Apple will stillbe doing the same things it always was and will still do business as "Apple Computer". Pixar and Disney are an obvious fit. The genius of Steve Jobs is that he sees that Disney and Apple are an obvious fit as well!
(If you can't see why Disney and Apple should be together, just wait a while. It'll come to you.)
Come on people! Now a days all sorts of companies are merging that have *nothing* to do with each other? Microsoft and Web TV? Hmm... what do they have to do with each other? GE and NBC? Proctor and Gamble isa the scariest company in the world as far as I'm concerned.
Only good things can come out of this all around.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I can live with that as long as they keep the G3s coming.
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
If you look closely at the the new, spiffy lookin' G3s you'll see that the 3 part of G3 at the Apple over it make the outline of a Mickey head! Scary enough for ya?
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
There was a suggestion in the one of the January Forbes Op-Ed pieces which suggested that Steve Jobs should move into the big chair at Disney. This, coupled with other market rumors and a good fourth quarter and holiday season for Apple caused a rise in both Apple's and Disney's stocks during the first few weeks of last month.
This deal would make some of Disney's major investors very happy. Eisner and his press office have been saying that Disney and ABC are in a ten year cyclical slump and that this is something they expected but anyone who's had a pulse and a clue for the past four years has realized that Eisner hasn't figured out this new market or how Disney can leverage it's position and excellent brand recognition. We'll have to see howgo goes, but outside of some of the Disney online content focused on youth, such as Blast they have not gotten into this brave new world.
bnf
this space intentionally left blank (oops)
I didn't post the original comment.
But, if you turn off link underlining (like I do) and you've already read the Apple Insider article, "pitched Apple as well" looks just like the rest of the text thanks to the VLINK="#000000" on the page.
Closed-circuit to CmdrTaco: Can we get a different color for VLINKs -- maybe #666666 or #999999? I know I don't have your sense of style, but I think that'd fit in with the rest of the site.
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
I belive that Disney is one of the
corporations that want 90 year copyrights?
So they can profit from their Mickey mouse.
For more years. It would kill the gutenberg
project. http://www.gutenberg.org
They said Jobs stands to gain 5 billion if Disney aquired Pixar. 5 billion dollers is a nice chunk of money for Jobs to stick into his baby, Apple. Anyone ever think that might be his plan? To "own" Apple again.
There wouldn't be much benefit if Disney bought Apple
It seems that Jobs is not good at running large oranizations. He is good at inspiring createivity. It would be hard to see him as CEO over The entire Disney Empire. I Think he may be a good asset to re-energize Disney one peice at a time.
Microsoft sees open source software coming.
(Well at least realizes its monopoly will not last for ever, and has cash to burn)
Sees the needs to diversify away from OS + office applications.
Moves into content (NBC, zdnet etc etc)
Tries to turn itself into a media company.
Disney sees Microsoft as a *major* competitor (Eisner has said this himself).
The future of media==computers.
Disney realize this too.
How they are going to win is not yet apparent, but right now they are just building the arsenal. Disney is a cash-cow, and has money to burn.
As other people have said, the apple brand fits the Disney brand perfectly and vice versa.
Hey, as of 6PM in whatever timezone Apple Insider's web server is in, the article was taken offline and replaced with a blank meta-refresh page. Did anybody get a copy before it was taken down?
I really doubt that Apple, Disney, and Pixar are going to tie the not. Steve may be good for apple, but he would stink for all three.
Actual photos of Steve Jobs at Disneyland while deal is being cut:
. html
http://home.rochester.rr.com/finishdish/dizzney
A slasdot exclusive.