Apple should negotiate with Microsoft to include an Apple implementation of the DirectX API.
Carmack once discussed this possibility in a plan update -- dicussing options for 3D graphics platforms. In essence, he felt that this would be stupid, as Apple would be guaranteed to always get a later release from MS, ala Microsoft Office. In the end, he felt OpenGL was a better choice.
Additionally, Apple should work on a better gaming API than DirectX, and make it available for Win95/98/NT
This seems like a suicide mission. There's no way Apple is going to be able to get better performance and functionality out of Windows than Microsoft.
There is significant fragmentation in the Linux community, but that is not a bad thing... People have different opinions, whims, and design philosophies... It's all a part of the Linux culture and not something that should be looked at with a negative spin.
Different opinions are good, different whims are good, different design philosophies can be very bad. In my opinion, that is the single biggest weakness of Linux at this point. The tools are all over the place. With a commercial package, you tend to get a fairly intergrated set of tools.
System administration in Linux is a good example. It's totally disjointed. Linuxconf here, netcfg there, make over there. And I personally think Linuxconf has a looong way to go. For established Unix users, it's no problem -- they just use the command line. But what about everyone else?
Why does Slashdot let this drivel through the gate? And better yet, why do so many Slashdot readers believe it? Slashdot is supposed to be about not swallowing things based on face value. Apple has issued ONE, SINGULAR, UNO press release on this matter, entitled "Apple Reconfigures Power Mac G4 Processor Speeds to Match Chip Availability." Whatever ZDNet and MacWeek said is their problem. Let's review Slashdot's stories on this over the past several days:
Wednesday: According to MacInTouch, Apple just reduced the processing speed of G4s by 50Mhz, without a price reduction or change in configuration, and cancelled all outstanding orders.
Thursday: According to MacInTouch "Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain
Sunday: "ZDNN appears to be reporting that Apple appears to be reversing its decision to reinstate all cancelled G4 orders, except for "a few orders"
So, for some odd reason, the first two days are pointed at MacInTouch, but the last one is pointed at ZDNet. If anyone had actually looked at MacInTouch today, they would realize that MacInTouch has (correct) information that directly contradict's MacWeek's:
As we reported first on Oct. 14, Apple reversed its decision to cancel outstanding Apple Store orders for Power Mac G4 computers and to force customers to re-order. [...] (Sources say that a contradictory report, citing Apple spokesperson Rhona Hamilton, has since been retracted.)
MacNN.com (the most reputable of the sites, IMNSHO), confirms this:
Our understanding is that all Apple Store orders before the "reconfiguration announcement" will be honored, as part of Apple's reversal on its G4 Cancellation policy. [...] (Muddying the issue is a MacWEEK report that claims Apple will only be reversing a limited number of Apple Store orders.)
If Slashdot (or readers) cannot responsibly research and report on Apple, it should cease doing so.
For some reason odd reason, listening to Live's Throw Copper gets me extremely focused. Of course, now we have "The Distance to Here" which is amazing as well.
As others said, intrustmentals/classical work great. Not only because there aren't any words to get in the way of typing, but something about long, deep songs that make you one with technology.
Of all the 20 or so people I know who used NeXT, one of them is excited about OS X and is planning on developing for it [...] Apple for listening to them and watering down rhapsody into rhapsody II then watering it down to OS X
How could they be excited about something that hasn't really be shown yet? Mac OS X DR1 is merely a temporary patch to let people write some apps. It is not in any way indicative of UI, technology, performance or features that will be present in the final version Mac OS X. All of that stuff is under tight wraps for the next 80 days or so before Macworld Expo SF -- which is my guess as to when it will be unleashed on the world (at least in the form of some serious demos).
And in terms of the transition from NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP to Mac OS X Server, only the UI has changed for the most part. Objective-C is still very much there, and (from what I can tell) is 50% of Apple's push for new Mac OS X apps, the other 50% being Java (which I think is brilliant, BTW).
what would have been wrong with supporting NeXT as a development platform, or even opening up parts of it to open source
One of the rumors currently circulating is that Apple is on the move, looking for a permanent CEO - Jobs will either go back to Pixar, or stay on as a consultant
You're nuts. Jobs absolutely loves the position he's in now.
Either way, I think Carmack's the man for the job, because as technical as he is, I think he's got his finger on the pulse of what's going to make or break the future of Mac OS.
Aside from the fact that Carmack has no real CEO experience...
Running a company like Id is so vastly different from running Apple that they're not even remotely comparable. What experience does Carmack have with selling hardware? Managing operating system projects? Serving/understanding Apple customers? Running a multi-billion dollar company? Carmack as Apple CEO makes no sense.
What would make sense is to hire him as a consultant for game developer relations. And in some ways, this is what Apple has already done, but without giving him a paycheck (unless you consider free hardware a paycheck).
The neat thing about pc's is that many many people make them, so you don't have to wait for them.
If you'd kind notice that the G4 shortage is a Motorola problem. It can't make enough chips to fill demand.
If Intel delayed a chip, no amount of Compaqs and Dells would make it ship faster. What might happen is AMD would step in and take up the slack, which is exactly what IBM is doing for Apple.
I can't believe how many people are willing to fly off the handle without understanding what they're talking about.
Major points:
DRAM prices have doubled more or less in the last few months. Meanwhile, Apple's prices remained constant.
The stock price is up nine points for two major reasons:
IBM is going to making Motorola's G4s (HUGE!)
Apple has $700 million in product backlog
Apple CFO Fred Anderson was not shy about the fact that Apple's December quarter numbers will be substantially higher.
The G4/400 was not just increased in price. Virtually no one realizes it, but this is a NEW G4/400 model. A bit of background is necessary to explain: When the G4 first came out, the 400mhz version was the only one available. But it was not much more than a G3 in G4's clothing. This "low-end" G4 had a G4 CPU, and a G4 casing, but the motherboard was basically a G3. This motherboad is codenamed "Yikes." The "real" G4s use a motherboard called "Sawtooth." With this motherboard, you get:
AGP (instead of PCI)
twice the memory bandwidth -- 800MB/sec vs. of 400MB/sec
1.5GB total RAM capacity vs. 1.0GB total RAM capacity
A Ultra ATA/66 interface
An internal FireWire port, in addition to the two external
Two independent USB buses
AirPort capabilities o Wiring to support Apple Cinema Display
The old G4/400 has none of this. So although the G4/400 started out life as a Yikes based machine (a revamped G3), Apple just graduated it to a Sawtooth machine overnight, with significant enhancements. As such, the price increase is actually justified, particuarly when taking into account the RAM issue.
So whoever preorded a G4/400 prior to all this is probably going to get much more than they originally bargained for -- at no additional cost.
If any business let something go like this I'm sure they would see a lot of law suites for false advertising. You just can't treat customers like that or you're going to get burned.
Apple is not the first company in the world to ever offer preorders on a product, then not have its suppliers able to fill demand. False advertising involves claiming something that you cannot or have no intention of delivering. Apple wants to ship these things just as much as customers want them.
The main problem is that Motorola isn't that great at fabricating chips. Motorola said they'd ship something, but they couldn't and apparently not without an "errata." That's why Apple asked IBM to step in.
They were completely within their legal rights to cancel the orders, but there was more backlash then they expected.
Their TCP/IP stack can't handle ftping at more that 10KB/s on a 10BaseT connection to the server that is 20 feet away...
You're absolutely smoking crack. I've seen transfer rates as high as 600k/sec (maybe 800?) on a G3 with a cable modem. What you may not know is that a lot of the networking was rewritten about a year ago for Mac OS 8.5.
For that matter, serial ISDN modems on the Mac for some time (perhaps still) performed better than their PC counterparts, do to the fact that Mac serial ports hit 230k, and PC wintel ports topped out a 165k. CNET had a story on this sometime back.
We make mac advocates look like pussies. [...] We respect those that at least tolerate us.
These two statements seem to be in direct conflict.:)
- Scott ------ Scott Stevenson
Re:Performance grading $200 PC for software select
on
$200 Linux PCs
·
· Score: 1
BTW: The iMac is ugly, these PC's are even uglier. How about something which looks more boring. Technology shouldn't bee seen, it should just work for you.
Why is it that people that think like this are convinced that everyone else must as well?
G4/400s are quite available. G4/450s supplies are constrained, but are out there. This really is more of Motorola's problem, but it gets handed down to Apple.
Isn't it time for Jobs to jump ship, sell all his shares, and send the company plunging into oblivion again?
Yes. That makes lots of sense.
Maybe he's waiting until they are a bit more over-valued.
Many analysts feel that Apple is actually a bit underated at this point. Just start doing a survey of analysts, and watch all the "buy" recommendations pop up.
What makes these "supercomputing macs" so great that they're worth paying more for than a pc with equal processing power?
The integer performance, while quite good, is not vastly different than the G3. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a match in the wintel world with the kind of performance you get from the AltiVec (Velocity Engine) vector unit. It is the vector unit that pushes the G4 past the sustained one gigaflop mark (burstable to 4 gigaflops I believe).
For example, every G4 comes with a Photoshop plugin on its hard drive that allows the application to take advantage of AltiVec. I have no benchmarks handy, but the results are phenominal. The same is true for SETI@home and Media Cleaner Pro (digital media encoding) -- the performance is incredible with a G4. And those were just the optimized apps announced at Seybold. I haven't kept tabs on what has popped up since them.
If you're just running xterms, it probably doesn't matter, but if you're doing a lot of digital media manipulation or scientific calculations, it's a little slice of heaven in a cool-looking case.
There are so many things wrong with this post I just don't know where to start.
I'm really sick of Apple apologists...
I'm really sick of Apple critics that don't understand what they're offering advice on.
A hokey press release claiming that this might not affect MacOS users is just plain stupid
Who put out a press release? This was all from MacWeek's "sources." Apple and Motorola had absolutely nothing to do with MacWeek's analysis that "this issue might never evince itself in Macs."
Not to mention that atop all of this, Apple isn't offering any highly-clocked, discounted G3, nope
Pretty off-topic, but I'll address it. You can get a G3/400 for $1299 with DV stuff of in the form of an iMac. I'm sure there are still G3 towers around from various retailers. Selling G3s and G4s at the same time would cause unnecessary product line confusion.
just more G4 marketing hype... "Yeah, the AltiVec velocity engine will help AppleWorks with all of that vector math you'll be doing".
Right. Most people buy a G4 to use AppleWorks.
The least Apple could do would be to investigate the possibility of selling real workstations, based on MacOS X and powered by a Power3, Alpha, or maybe K7.
I agree. Apple should spend 6-12 months porting Mac OS X to Alpha, Power3 or K7, and concince developers to do the same. In the process they can alienate and confuse their customers, piss off wallstreet by radically altering their business strategy without warning, and lose the ease of administration Macs enjoy from tight software/hardware intregration, and ultimately elminate Apple's value proposition.
By why stop there? Why not just outsource the hardware manufacturing to Dell and just focus on software? Maybe Apple could work on some applications to compete head-on with MS Office, or maybe write a web browser. It should also open source everything and just sell the service contracts.
He has one share of Apple stock and I don't think he receives any salary for being "interim" CEO of Apple.
That may have been the case two years ago, but I doubt it is now. Apple said some time ago that executive and board members would receive rewards/payment via options, rather than cash. Though Jobs probably does fine on his on.
He takes a $1/yr salary so he can get benefits. This was all in Time magazine a while back. He's clearly not in it for the money.
As for all the Bug's Life connections, I think it's mostly a fun joke. Jobs always tosses something around about Pixar at keynotes and follows it with a chuckle. But it probably boosts both companies a bit as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple should negotiate with Microsoft to include an Apple implementation of the DirectX API.
Carmack once discussed this possibility in a plan update -- dicussing options for 3D graphics platforms. In essence, he felt that this would be stupid, as Apple would be guaranteed to always get a later release from MS, ala Microsoft Office. In the end, he felt OpenGL was a better choice.
Additionally, Apple should work on a better gaming API than DirectX, and make it available for Win95/98/NT
This seems like a suicide mission. There's no way Apple is going to be able to get better performance and functionality out of Windows than Microsoft.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Yep, Wintel is even better than Playstations these days.
The difference being, DirectX doesn't choke out halfway through a game, and you don't need to download newer drivers. Pure silliness.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
There is significant fragmentation in the Linux community, but that is not a bad thing... People have different opinions, whims, and design philosophies... It's all a part of the Linux culture and not something that should be looked at with a negative spin.
Different opinions are good, different whims are good, different design philosophies can be very bad. In my opinion, that is the single biggest weakness of Linux at this point. The tools are all over the place. With a commercial package, you tend to get a fairly intergrated set of tools.
System administration in Linux is a good example. It's totally disjointed. Linuxconf here, netcfg there, make over there. And I personally think Linuxconf has a looong way to go. For established Unix users, it's no problem -- they just use the command line. But what about everyone else?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
I'll be amazed to see what kind of FUD the Mac-fanatics come up with to make this whole flimflam excusable.
How about something as simple as "ZDNet is wrong"?
As for FUD, it's only coming in one direction for this story. Did anyone actually research this before commenting on it?
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Apple has no one to blame for its slow return to profitability but itself.
Eh?
Gil Amelio was officiallly kicked out of the CEO slot on July 9, 1997. (Jobs took over)
On January 14, 1998, Apple announced its first profitable quarter ($45 million) in what seemed like forever.
Sure was slow. Took Jobs a good... what... SIX months?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Why does Slashdot let this drivel through the gate? And better yet, why do so many Slashdot readers believe it? Slashdot is supposed to be about not swallowing things based on face value. Apple has issued ONE, SINGULAR, UNO press release on this matter, entitled "Apple Reconfigures Power Mac G4 Processor Speeds to Match Chip Availability." Whatever ZDNet and MacWeek said is their problem. Let's review Slashdot's stories on this over the past several days:
Wednesday: According to MacInTouch, Apple just reduced the processing speed of G4s by 50Mhz, without a price reduction or change in configuration, and cancelled all outstanding orders.
Thursday: According to MacInTouch "Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain
Sunday: "ZDNN appears to be reporting that Apple appears to be reversing its decision to reinstate all cancelled G4 orders, except for "a few orders"
So, for some odd reason, the first two days are pointed at MacInTouch, but the last one is pointed at ZDNet. If anyone had actually looked at MacInTouch today, they would realize that MacInTouch has (correct) information that directly contradict's MacWeek's:
As we reported first on Oct. 14, Apple reversed its decision to cancel outstanding Apple Store orders for Power Mac G4 computers and to force customers to re-order. [...] (Sources say that a contradictory report, citing Apple spokesperson Rhona Hamilton, has since been retracted.)
MacNN.com (the most reputable of the sites, IMNSHO), confirms this:
Our understanding is that all Apple Store orders before the "reconfiguration announcement" will be honored, as part of Apple's reversal on its G4 Cancellation policy. [...] (Muddying the issue is a MacWEEK report that claims Apple will only be reversing a limited number of Apple Store orders.)
If Slashdot (or readers) cannot responsibly research and report on Apple, it should cease doing so.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
For some reason odd reason, listening to Live's Throw Copper gets me extremely focused. Of course, now we have "The Distance to Here" which is amazing as well.
As others said, intrustmentals/classical work great. Not only because there aren't any words to get in the way of typing, but something about long, deep songs that make you one with technology.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Of all the 20 or so people I know who used NeXT, one of them is excited about OS X and is planning on developing for it [...] Apple for listening to them and watering down rhapsody into rhapsody II then watering it down to OS X
How could they be excited about something that hasn't really be shown yet? Mac OS X DR1 is merely a temporary patch to let people write some apps. It is not in any way indicative of UI, technology, performance or features that will be present in the final version Mac OS X. All of that stuff is under tight wraps for the next 80 days or so before Macworld Expo SF -- which is my guess as to when it will be unleashed on the world (at least in the form of some serious demos).
And in terms of the transition from NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP to Mac OS X Server, only the UI has changed for the most part. Objective-C is still very much there, and (from what I can tell) is 50% of Apple's push for new Mac OS X apps, the other 50% being Java (which I think is brilliant, BTW).
what would have been wrong with supporting NeXT as a development platform, or even opening up parts of it to open source
Heard of Darwin?
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
One of the rumors currently circulating is that Apple is on the move, looking for a permanent CEO - Jobs will either go back to Pixar, or stay on as a consultant
You're nuts. Jobs absolutely loves the position he's in now.
Either way, I think Carmack's the man for the job, because as technical as he is, I think he's got his finger on the pulse of what's going to make or break the future of Mac OS.
Aside from the fact that Carmack has no real CEO experience...
Running a company like Id is so vastly different from running Apple that they're not even remotely comparable. What experience does Carmack have with selling hardware? Managing operating system projects? Serving/understanding Apple customers? Running a multi-billion dollar company? Carmack as Apple CEO makes no sense.
What would make sense is to hire him as a consultant for game developer relations. And in some ways, this is what Apple has already done, but without giving him a paycheck (unless you consider free hardware a paycheck).
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
He's more like Wozniak. The guy who did the work and let other people worry about being flashy.
Just so there's no confusion, Wozniak did indeed drive the work on the Apple machines, but had limited interaction with the Macintosh project.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Their next move will probably be to overclock 450MHZ chips to 500MHZ.
:) It's only overclocking if the user selects the speed higher than recommened.
That's not really overclocking. That's just "clocking."
The chips do, in fact run at 500mhz, but not without a bug that Motorola recently discovered that only occurs at that speed.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Why not wait for IBM's new ATX motherboard that accepts a Gx proccessor? This will alow people to get the best of both the pc and the mac worlds.
Let's see, it doesn't run any Mac apps?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
The neat thing about pc's is that many many people make them, so you don't have to wait for them.
If you'd kind notice that the G4 shortage is a Motorola problem. It can't make enough chips to fill demand.
If Intel delayed a chip, no amount of Compaqs and Dells would make it ship faster. What might happen is AMD would step in and take up the slack, which is exactly what IBM is doing for Apple.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
I can't believe how many people are willing to fly off the handle without understanding what they're talking about.
Major points:
When the G4 first came out, the 400mhz version was the only one available. But it was not much more than a G3 in G4's clothing. This "low-end" G4 had a G4 CPU, and a G4 casing, but the motherboard was basically a G3. This motherboad is codenamed "Yikes." The "real" G4s use a motherboard called "Sawtooth." With this motherboard, you get:
The old G4/400 has none of this. So although the G4/400 started out life as a Yikes based machine (a revamped G3), Apple just graduated it to a Sawtooth machine overnight, with significant enhancements. As such, the price increase is actually justified, particuarly when taking into account the RAM issue.
So whoever preorded a G4/400 prior to all this is probably going to get much more than they originally bargained for -- at no additional cost.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
If any business let something go like this I'm sure they would see a lot of law suites for false advertising. You just can't treat customers like that or you're going to get burned.
Apple is not the first company in the world to ever offer preorders on a product, then not have its suppliers able to fill demand. False advertising involves claiming something that you cannot or have no intention of delivering. Apple wants to ship these things just as much as customers want them.
The main problem is that Motorola isn't that great at fabricating chips. Motorola said they'd ship something, but they couldn't and apparently not without an "errata." That's why Apple asked IBM to step in.
They were completely within their legal rights to cancel the orders, but there was more backlash then they expected.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Their TCP/IP stack can't handle ftping at more that 10KB/s on a 10BaseT connection to the server that is 20 feet away...
You're absolutely smoking crack. I've seen transfer rates as high as 600k/sec (maybe 800?) on a G3 with a cable modem. What you may not know is that a lot of the networking was rewritten about a year ago for Mac OS 8.5.
For that matter, serial ISDN modems on the Mac for some time (perhaps still) performed better than their PC counterparts, do to the fact that Mac serial ports hit 230k, and PC wintel ports topped out a 165k. CNET had a story on this sometime back.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
We make mac advocates look like pussies.
:)
[...]
We respect those that at least tolerate us.
These two statements seem to be in direct conflict.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
BTW: The iMac is ugly, these PC's are even uglier. How about something which looks more boring. Technology shouldn't bee seen, it should just work for you.
Why is it that people that think like this are convinced that everyone else must as well?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Helloooo flamebait...
and G4s aren't out yet
G4/400s are quite available. G4/450s supplies are constrained, but are out there. This really is more of Motorola's problem, but it gets handed down to Apple.
Isn't it time for Jobs to jump ship, sell all his shares, and send the company plunging into oblivion again?
Yes. That makes lots of sense.
Maybe he's waiting until they are a bit more over-valued.
Many analysts feel that Apple is actually a bit underated at this point. Just start doing a survey of analysts, and watch all the "buy" recommendations pop up.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
I would like to state for the record that although I am a Mac user/supporter, I don't put myself behind this post. :)
:P
"No need for Virtual Memory?" Help!
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
What makes these "supercomputing macs" so great that they're worth paying more for than a pc with equal processing power?
The integer performance, while quite good, is not vastly different than the G3. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a match in the wintel world with the kind of performance you get from the AltiVec (Velocity Engine) vector unit. It is the vector unit that pushes the G4 past the sustained one gigaflop mark (burstable to 4 gigaflops I believe).
For example, every G4 comes with a Photoshop plugin on its hard drive that allows the application to take advantage of AltiVec. I have no benchmarks handy, but the results are phenominal. The same is true for SETI@home and Media Cleaner Pro (digital media encoding) -- the performance is incredible with a G4. And those were just the optimized apps announced at Seybold. I haven't kept tabs on what has popped up since them.
If you're just running xterms, it probably doesn't matter, but if you're doing a lot of digital media manipulation or scientific calculations, it's a little slice of heaven in a cool-looking case.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
nor is it an "errata" (who dug that word out of its grave?)
:)
RedHat.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
There are so many things wrong with this post I just don't know where to start.
:)
I'm really sick of Apple apologists...
I'm really sick of Apple critics that don't understand what they're offering advice on.
A hokey press release claiming that this might not affect MacOS users is just plain stupid
Who put out a press release? This was all from MacWeek's "sources." Apple and Motorola had absolutely nothing to do with MacWeek's analysis that "this issue might never evince itself in Macs."
Not to mention that atop all of this, Apple isn't offering any highly-clocked, discounted G3, nope
Pretty off-topic, but I'll address it. You can get a G3/400 for $1299 with DV stuff of in the form of an iMac. I'm sure there are still G3 towers around from various retailers. Selling G3s and G4s at the same time would cause unnecessary product line confusion.
just more G4 marketing hype... "Yeah, the AltiVec velocity engine will help AppleWorks with all of that vector math you'll be doing".
Right. Most people buy a G4 to use AppleWorks.
The least Apple could do would be to investigate the possibility of selling real workstations, based on MacOS X and powered by a Power3, Alpha, or maybe K7.
I agree. Apple should spend 6-12 months porting Mac OS X to Alpha, Power3 or K7, and concince developers to do the same. In the process they can alienate and confuse their customers, piss off wallstreet by radically altering their business strategy without warning, and lose the ease of administration Macs enjoy from tight software/hardware intregration, and ultimately elminate Apple's value proposition.
By why stop there? Why not just outsource the hardware manufacturing to Dell and just focus on software? Maybe Apple could work on some applications to compete head-on with MS Office, or maybe write a web browser. It should also open source everything and just sell the service contracts.
One more thing -- Linus should be the CEO.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
I believe supercomputer status is based on number of operations executed per second, not the number of processors.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
He has one share of Apple stock and I don't think he receives any salary for being "interim" CEO of Apple.
That may have been the case two years ago, but I doubt it is now. Apple said some time ago that executive and board members would receive rewards/payment via options, rather than cash. Though Jobs probably does fine on his on.
He takes a $1/yr salary so he can get benefits. This was all in Time magazine a while back. He's clearly not in it for the money.
As for all the Bug's Life connections, I think it's mostly a fun joke. Jobs always tosses something around about Pixar at keynotes and follows it with a chuckle. But it probably boosts both companies a bit as well.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson