This is probably the easiest explaination, especially based on how often the various races disguised themselves in almost all series ("The Enterprise Incident" and "The Journey to Babel" come to mind). The TOS Klingons were attemting to better interact with the other races, and giving up in disgust.
This has the advantage of the fact that the Klingons did this to themselves, and why the cosmetic changes were reversed. It's also why the Klingons don't like talking about it, as they see the whole effort as an embarassment ("How could we have been so naive?" some of the older captains say to themselves...).
Walter Koenig (the actor that played Chekov) has stated that he realised this as well, but that he kept his yap shut so that he wouldn't lose screen time to George Takei (Sulu) through a rewrite.
Otherwise, as far as nitpicks go, this one is rather minor. Chekov was on the ship (no crew transfers back then, as they wanted to keep the "far from all other ships" feeling), and the meeting was simply off-screen. The end effect is that Khan's memory is even better if he can remember a name mentioned in passing.
The Wrath of Kahn is a classic collection of things to pick apart (the overly long "sixty seconds", the wandering bloodstain on Kirk's jacket, and many more), but the movie is still the best Star Trek movie made.
1. The 3.5" was just too small. Most data files were more than a megabyte in size, and Apple's core user group had moved on.
2. There were too many competing replacement formats. Should they go with zip, SuperDisk, MiniDisc or the Olympus MO solution? Or should offices stick to Ethernet and be happy about it? "Best let the customer decide" was the mantra I remember hearing.
3. Jobs hated floppies for some strange reason. Well, not exactly floppies, but he hated (and still hates) legacy cruft in designs. He also hates noisy fans, but that's another story.
Despite the fact that Woz isn't playing any big role at Apple anymore, you can still see the Jobs/Woz split personality in the Mac lineup: the iMac/eMac line is designed for "fire and forget" operation, no user serviceable part inside (the Jobs philosophy). The Power Macs and xServes are designed for easy internal modification (the Woz philosophy). Leaving out the floppy was a typical Jobs solution (and why the iMac came before the B&W G3)
Maybe there are a lot of switch ads because people find them annoying and stupid?
There are a lot of annoying and stupid ads out there. Why are we all so fixated on Apple's? Why do these incredibly ordinary-looking people come across so, well, ugly and unskilled?
My guess is because of Apple's place in the public's eye. People have been told again and again that only savvy paople and hard-core artists use Macs. Apple's new campaign is trying to dismantle the "artsy fartsy freak" image and show totally average people with all of their foibles.
And I think the real reason people react so badly to the commercial is because most pictures of "real people" try to gloss over their blemishes. This one highlights them mercilessly. Not what you expect in an age of wardrobe departments, hair stylists and Photoshopping.
After all, how many parodies of the flying XP users did we see mentioned on Slashdot?
Most of these cheap probes are meant for suicide missions. It's hard to keep sending back info when you're slamming into a hellish atmosphere, or weathering the sandstorms of Mars.
It's like comparing dispisable watches to a Rolex.
Your example is, well, wrong. Apple killed the clone market by buying their biggest contender outright (Power Computing) and by letting the ROM licences expire without renewal. That, plus a chilly wind, forced all other out. As a Mac owner who lived through the bump up from 7.6. to 8, I found the changes worth the new integer.
The Sorenson dust-up isn't about Apple wanting to shut out others as much as Apple's believing that Sorenson was trying to cut them out of the loop. Having the QuickTime logo on the packaging is what counts.
Maybe this is different enough, due to its coming from a different webmag, but it IS redundant. Definitely not front page material, but not easy to shoehorn into any of the existing sections either.
What we REALLY need is a new section just for games, so that the Benevolent Tyrants (aka editors) can keep posting articles like this without cluttering up the front page. It works for the Apple, Ask Slashdot and science articles, why not for the game stuff as well?
It gets murkier if you take MS out of the picture... Say you have Company A and Company B. They produce (say) competing recipe management tools. Company A also sells advanced CAD/CAM software. If Company A GPLs their recipe management program and distributes it for free in an attempt to destroy Company B while A lives off CAD/CAM revenue, can B cry foul?
Well, in this scenario A (the GPL'er) has effectively given all control of its recipe software away, and ensured that no single entity can control it in the future. The difference between this and classic "price dumping" is that the price dumped commodity will go back up in price once the competition has been eliminated. This is (in essence) what Microsoft did to WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and other office programs.
When Microsoft first started giving IE away for free, I suspect that this was what they were planning: as soon as Netscape was gone, they could start charging for it. Then some marketing genius came up with the idea of enmeshing it, and the rest is well-known.
What bugs me about this is that Apple flubbed the spin by being all secret about it. If they would have leaked how much usage had exceeded expectations, then how much of a drain this was causing, I think people would accept this better. Now we feel hoodwinked and betrayed.
On the other hand, they *have* given me a little over two months to clean out my iDisk and shut down my @mac.com addy. It would be nice if they had offered a bare-bones email POP/SMTP, but I've got other adresses and storage possibilities.
So this is one of the moments where I really hate Mr. Jobs' love of secrecy and surprises. Microsoft's.NET attack on our wallets has us all edgy, and they pull this stupid.mac stunt and blindside loyal users with this change.
I'm thinking it's a joke as well. Apple is planning something with iTools, as the rest of the iTools site is down, but this somehow smells fishy.
I even took a peek at the source HTML, but I coudn't find any clues there one way or the other. I can't help but think, though, that this is a deliberate gag. Apple is normally too careful as to let something like this go online ahead of schedule.
If it isn't a red herring, then some webmonkey is going to be in for a world of hurt. I guess we'll know more after the speech in a couple of hours...
Coldstone does seem like a worthy descendant to Adventure Construction Kit, as it allows stand-alone games and encourages writing your own adventures. The problem with Coldstone as a construction kit is that it currently only runs on Mac OS (8.1 to X). Oh, the finished games will run on Windows as well, but the developer kit hasn't been ported over yet. This isn't a problem for me (I have a Mac), but you need to have the hardware.
Y'know, I think Apple should buy/bundle this with new iMacs and iBooks. This would encourage more creative play and also promote the Mac as a developer's machine.
Right now, shareware and open source projects seem to be the only place where you can find the middle ground between tools like iShell and Director, and engine-specific world-builders like Forge for Marathon or Fear and Loathing for Myth II (another popular scene for developing your own worlds, as exemplified by the acclaimed World War II conversions).
Microsoft got big by taking the discount route to software: make what the other guy's making, but make it for a lower sticker price. Since it's harder to tell a rip-off from the original when it comes to software, they made a killing.
One Linux exposed the sham behind their strategy, they were stumped. They had gotten so used to price-dumping rivals out of business that they coudn't imagine a product without a company. And you know what? They still can't. They attack Red Hat, SuSE, Lindows and the others because they can't attack the developers themselves.
Their attack strategy is like a hammer. It's good against other rocks, but worthless against a pond. How do you break the form of something that has no form?
There are a lot of good reasons why Office for Macintosh hasn't been doing that good.
1. Office is not bundled. You have to pay full price, or have an updateable copy. "Crossgrades" (trading in a Windows license for a Mac one) are not available from Microsoft. And let's face it: Microsoft is widely considered overpriced by consumers.
2. Apple Works comes pre-installed on the consumer-level machines, and is considered "good enough" by most of the paople that use it.
3. Open Office is coming to the Mac. My last Mac magazine issue had it packed on the CD.
4. Mac owners are leery of the "XP disease" of forced registration touching their computers. The fact that Office for Mac doesn't have this is discounted as "only being a matter of time".
5. A lot of former PC owners want to get away from Microsoft altogether. Making the switch means trying out the alternatives.
Look, I'll be honest. Without a compelling "first world", this project is not gonna get off of the ground. The engine behind my favorite single-player modifiable games (Marathon, Myth, Diablo) had compelling stories that drew me deeper into the world (and interested me in writing my own scenarios).
The developers had better remember this, and have a team specifically for fleshing out their default world. It might also be enough to attract more coders into helping complete the project so that they can begin exploring the world (or write their own in a fit of "I can do better!" envy).
This thing looks like it was made to be a LAN party machine instead of a Mac lookalike. The handle, the flip cover for the connectors, all suggest that this box was meant for lugging to the next tourney. The question is why they didn't go to the logical conclusion and use more rubber or hard plastic to protect against scrapes and bumps. I would have gone for the yellow-and-black "sports electronics" style.
Seriously, though, the builders ought to tone down their "looks like a Mac" spiel, or else they'll start drawing heat from Apple's rabid lawyer corps. I think the design is different enough, but there's no need to tempt fate.
Whatever the decisions were, and whoever made them were bad decisions in the long run.
The thing that made pre-Microsoft Bungie so fun was the fact that the games had an engaging storyline. The Marathon series for the Macintosh was fun because it was so original with mad AIs guiding the player along a twisted story. Myth presented a world mired in horrific war, with a deep layer of lore behind the plot line. Halo and Oni were developed as plots, then the game maps designed to meet the demands of the story.
After the buyout, this story aspect began to suffer. Oni got sanitised (some early demos had more wounds and blood), and Halo's MMORPG premise got axed. I don't know how much of the storyline survived, and I'm not sure if I want to know.
Bungie had its moment, but Microsoft has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. It's hard to keep a scrappy attitude when you're owned by the largest software maker around.
This may be Roxio's bic problem, as Disc Burner and iTunes are pre-installed and do the job well for so many Mac owners.
As far as third-party drives are concerned, Toast may still be the "tool of choice", but it's not as if they're alone out there. If they get too restrictive (instead of the current token bone thrown to the lawsuit-happy record companies), they may find current users like myself jumping ship.
Heck, Discribe was offered for free as a subscriber's bonus in my last Macwelt issue. I may install that now...
Choosing Terry Gilliam to do Good Omens is perfect. His style and dark humour complement Pratchett and Gaiman's wierd little epic. Although Terry Gilliam is American, he is one of the few directors I'd trust to do this with the right British touch (not too much, but not too little as well).
Now we can hope for an intelligent comedy that doesn't resort to butt (fart) jokes.
Considering a lot of Wolfgang's other movies ("Das Boot", "In The Line Of Fire", "Perfect Storm"), I think he'd be the right man to make sure this doesn't become a fanpiece. I'm hoping it will make both "heroes" look like crazies: Batman a little too much of a vigilante, Superman too much of a hypocritical "boy scout".
My guess is that we'll see them holding each other in contempt, growing into hate. And the climatic battle will be broken off so that a greater threat can be averted (or they look at the collateral damage they caused and turn away in disgust). No winners.
Then again, AOLTimeWarner is not gonna let Mr. Petersen do a ruined downtown, especially not in a post-11.09.01 climate.
1. ThinkSecret is less than useless, since their rumor hit miss ratio is equal to "dart board" methods.
2. Ziff-Davis (ZDNet and C|Net) seem to be the source of this smokescreen. Also not the most accurate source of Apple news. Sometimes I get the feeling that the guys over at C|Net are more knee-jerk than factual (although David Coursey got real Mac-lustful after his trial with a flat-screen iMac).
3. The other rumor was the resurrection of the Cube, bundled with 17" flatscreens. After all, the Cube wasn't killed, just put into hibernation. Maybe they had to pull it back out of the freezer to make room for Ted Williams?
4. If it is true, then Apple needs to lower their inventory of current iMacs, as their price is going to drop as soon as the bigger, better version hits the market. The only explanation as to why they haven't done so yet is because they know it's a sign the sages look for. But it isn't a good reason at all. 5. There was a fifth reason to discount this rumor, but the RDF rays are wearing off. Fnord.
Apple has the experience with 3D, albiet discontinued. If Microsoft got persnickety, Apple could play the savior and offer its experience with QuickDraw 3D to the OpenGL community to work around the disputed patents. Granted, the team doesn't exist anymore, but QuickDraw 3D was killed because Apple didn't see any point in competing with OpenGL (although a lot of developers were upset at this, but them's the breaks!)
I would like to see this happen, as it would make Microsoft look like a bully (again), and make their purchase from SGI worthless.
As for the MPEG4 dispute, Apple's little scene *did* win them large concessions from the MPEG working group. Its main beef was that hobby QuickTime broadcasters can't afford the huge fees the MPEG group wanted to collect. This area is where Apple saw its edge over other proprietary streaming protocols such as Real.
If you examine some of Lucas' comments in recent times, he views all of his movies as permanent "works in progress". It's why he wasn't afraid to touch up the first trilogy. This is a big difference to Spielberg's attitude.
I think Lucas and Spielberg are well aware of their stylistic differences after their Indiana Jones collaborations. Lucas is probably afraid not that Spielberg would do it better, but that the end product would bear more of Spielberg's signature than Lucas'. In George's eyes, Star Wars is his Big Vision which he won't share any more.
My guess is that Spielberg won't get a chance, but I could imagine letting a young director loose on the Star Wars series as a retelling......in about 20 years or so.
Well, according to this chart, Apple was hosting their websites on Solaris machines until late 2000. It looks like instead of just trashing the machines, Apple shuffled them off into the back rooms to handle lesser duties like SU and such.
I think this is a good idea, as 1) the machines are still good, and 2) it saves resources by using them as long as possible. Apple's server forays are still relatively new (and against the spirit of building personal computers), so it's natural that they'd had somebody else's boxen.
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably the easiest explaination, especially based on how often the various races disguised themselves in almost all series ("The Enterprise Incident" and "The Journey to Babel" come to mind). The TOS Klingons were attemting to better interact with the other races, and giving up in disgust.
This has the advantage of the fact that the Klingons did this to themselves, and why the cosmetic changes were reversed. It's also why the Klingons don't like talking about it, as they see the whole effort as an embarassment ("How could we have been so naive?" some of the older captains say to themselves...).
Walter Koenig (the actor that played Chekov) has stated that he realised this as well, but that he kept his yap shut so that he wouldn't lose screen time to George Takei (Sulu) through a rewrite.
Otherwise, as far as nitpicks go, this one is rather minor. Chekov was on the ship (no crew transfers back then, as they wanted to keep the "far from all other ships" feeling), and the meeting was simply off-screen. The end effect is that Khan's memory is even better if he can remember a name mentioned in passing.
The Wrath of Kahn is a classic collection of things to pick apart (the overly long "sixty seconds", the wandering bloodstain on Kirk's jacket, and many more), but the movie is still the best Star Trek movie made.
Apple's decision was based on three things:
1. The 3.5" was just too small. Most data files were more than a megabyte in size, and Apple's core user group had moved on.
2. There were too many competing replacement formats. Should they go with zip, SuperDisk, MiniDisc or the Olympus MO solution? Or should offices stick to Ethernet and be happy about it? "Best let the customer decide" was the mantra I remember hearing.
3. Jobs hated floppies for some strange reason. Well, not exactly floppies, but he hated (and still hates) legacy cruft in designs. He also hates noisy fans, but that's another story.
Despite the fact that Woz isn't playing any big role at Apple anymore, you can still see the Jobs/Woz split personality in the Mac lineup: the iMac/eMac line is designed for "fire and forget" operation, no user serviceable part inside (the Jobs philosophy). The Power Macs and xServes are designed for easy internal modification (the Woz philosophy). Leaving out the floppy was a typical Jobs solution (and why the iMac came before the B&W G3)
Maybe there are a lot of switch ads because people find them annoying and stupid?
There are a lot of annoying and stupid ads out there. Why are we all so fixated on Apple's? Why do these incredibly ordinary-looking people come across so, well, ugly and unskilled?
My guess is because of Apple's place in the public's eye. People have been told again and again that only savvy paople and hard-core artists use Macs. Apple's new campaign is trying to dismantle the "artsy fartsy freak" image and show totally average people with all of their foibles.
And I think the real reason people react so badly to the commercial is because most pictures of "real people" try to gloss over their blemishes. This one highlights them mercilessly. Not what you expect in an age of wardrobe departments, hair stylists and Photoshopping.
After all, how many parodies of the flying XP users did we see mentioned on Slashdot?
Most of these cheap probes are meant for suicide missions. It's hard to keep sending back info when you're slamming into a hellish atmosphere, or weathering the sandstorms of Mars.
It's like comparing dispisable watches to a Rolex.
Your example is, well, wrong. Apple killed the clone market by buying their biggest contender outright (Power Computing) and by letting the ROM licences expire without renewal. That, plus a chilly wind, forced all other out. As a Mac owner who lived through the bump up from 7.6. to 8, I found the changes worth the new integer.
The Sorenson dust-up isn't about Apple wanting to shut out others as much as Apple's believing that Sorenson was trying to cut them out of the loop. Having the QuickTime logo on the packaging is what counts.
Maybe this is different enough, due to its coming from a different webmag, but it IS redundant. Definitely not front page material, but not easy to shoehorn into any of the existing sections either.
...
What we REALLY need is a new section just for games, so that the Benevolent Tyrants (aka editors) can keep posting articles like this without cluttering up the front page. It works for the Apple, Ask Slashdot and science articles, why not for the game stuff as well?
Just my ?0.02
When Microsoft first started giving IE away for free, I suspect that this was what they were planning: as soon as Netscape was gone, they could start charging for it. Then some marketing genius came up with the idea of enmeshing it, and the rest is well-known.
This is why people say they hate surprises.
.NET attack on our wallets has us all edgy, and they pull this stupid .mac stunt and blindside loyal users with this change.
What bugs me about this is that Apple flubbed the spin by being all secret about it. If they would have leaked how much usage had exceeded expectations, then how much of a drain this was causing, I think people would accept this better. Now we feel hoodwinked and betrayed.
On the other hand, they *have* given me a little over two months to clean out my iDisk and shut down my @mac.com addy. It would be nice if they had offered a bare-bones email POP/SMTP, but I've got other adresses and storage possibilities.
So this is one of the moments where I really hate Mr. Jobs' love of secrecy and surprises. Microsoft's
I'm thinking it's a joke as well. Apple is planning something with iTools, as the rest of the iTools site is down, but this somehow smells fishy.
I even took a peek at the source HTML, but I coudn't find any clues there one way or the other. I can't help but think, though, that this is a deliberate gag. Apple is normally too careful as to let something like this go online ahead of schedule.
If it isn't a red herring, then some webmonkey is going to be in for a world of hurt. I guess we'll know more after the speech in a couple of hours...
Coldstone does seem like a worthy descendant to Adventure Construction Kit, as it allows stand-alone games and encourages writing your own adventures. The problem with Coldstone as a construction kit is that it currently only runs on Mac OS (8.1 to X). Oh, the finished games will run on Windows as well, but the developer kit hasn't been ported over yet. This isn't a problem for me (I have a Mac), but you need to have the hardware.
Y'know, I think Apple should buy/bundle this with new iMacs and iBooks. This would encourage more creative play and also promote the Mac as a developer's machine.
Right now, shareware and open source projects seem to be the only place where you can find the middle ground between tools like iShell and Director, and engine-specific world-builders like Forge for Marathon or Fear and Loathing for Myth II (another popular scene for developing your own worlds, as exemplified by the acclaimed World War II conversions).
Microsoft got big by taking the discount route to software: make what the other guy's making, but make it for a lower sticker price. Since it's harder to tell a rip-off from the original when it comes to software, they made a killing.
One Linux exposed the sham behind their strategy, they were stumped. They had gotten so used to price-dumping rivals out of business that they coudn't imagine a product without a company. And you know what? They still can't. They attack Red Hat, SuSE, Lindows and the others because they can't attack the developers themselves.
Their attack strategy is like a hammer. It's good against other rocks, but worthless against a pond. How do you break the form of something that has no form?
In other words, Roxio is realising that simply recycling an EULA won't fly, especially as people are starting to read them.
It may be that this happened due to laziness, but that should be no excuse. Licence agreements need to be tailored to fit the product.
There are a lot of good reasons why Office for Macintosh hasn't been doing that good.
1. Office is not bundled. You have to pay full price, or have an updateable copy. "Crossgrades" (trading in a Windows license for a Mac one) are not available from Microsoft. And let's face it: Microsoft is widely considered overpriced by consumers.
2. Apple Works comes pre-installed on the consumer-level machines, and is considered "good enough" by most of the paople that use it.
3. Open Office is coming to the Mac. My last Mac magazine issue had it packed on the CD.
4. Mac owners are leery of the "XP disease" of forced registration touching their computers. The fact that Office for Mac doesn't have this is discounted as "only being a matter of time".
5. A lot of former PC owners want to get away from Microsoft altogether. Making the switch means trying out the alternatives.
Good point.
Look, I'll be honest. Without a compelling "first world", this project is not gonna get off of the ground. The engine behind my favorite single-player modifiable games (Marathon, Myth, Diablo) had compelling stories that drew me deeper into the world (and interested me in writing my own scenarios).
The developers had better remember this, and have a team specifically for fleshing out their default world. It might also be enough to attract more coders into helping complete the project so that they can begin exploring the world (or write their own in a fit of "I can do better!" envy).
This thing looks like it was made to be a LAN party machine instead of a Mac lookalike. The handle, the flip cover for the connectors, all suggest that this box was meant for lugging to the next tourney. The question is why they didn't go to the logical conclusion and use more rubber or hard plastic to protect against scrapes and bumps. I would have gone for the yellow-and-black "sports electronics" style.
Seriously, though, the builders ought to tone down their "looks like a Mac" spiel, or else they'll start drawing heat from Apple's rabid lawyer corps. I think the design is different enough, but there's no need to tempt fate.
Whatever the decisions were, and whoever made them were bad decisions in the long run.
The thing that made pre-Microsoft Bungie so fun was the fact that the games had an engaging storyline. The Marathon series for the Macintosh was fun because it was so original with mad AIs guiding the player along a twisted story. Myth presented a world mired in horrific war, with a deep layer of lore behind the plot line. Halo and Oni were developed as plots, then the game maps designed to meet the demands of the story.
After the buyout, this story aspect began to suffer. Oni got sanitised (some early demos had more wounds and blood), and Halo's MMORPG premise got axed. I don't know how much of the storyline survived, and I'm not sure if I want to know.
Bungie had its moment, but Microsoft has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. It's hard to keep a scrappy attitude when you're owned by the largest software maker around.
This may be Roxio's bic problem, as Disc Burner and iTunes are pre-installed and do the job well for so many Mac owners.
As far as third-party drives are concerned, Toast may still be the "tool of choice", but it's not as if they're alone out there. If they get too restrictive (instead of the current token bone thrown to the lawsuit-happy record companies), they may find current users like myself jumping ship.
Heck, Discribe was offered for free as a subscriber's bonus in my last Macwelt issue. I may install that now...
Choosing Terry Gilliam to do Good Omens is perfect. His style and dark humour complement Pratchett and Gaiman's wierd little epic. Although Terry Gilliam is American, he is one of the few directors I'd trust to do this with the right British touch (not too much, but not too little as well).
Now we can hope for an intelligent comedy that doesn't resort to butt (fart) jokes.
Considering a lot of Wolfgang's other movies ("Das Boot", "In The Line Of Fire", "Perfect Storm"), I think he'd be the right man to make sure this doesn't become a fanpiece. I'm hoping it will make both "heroes" look like crazies: Batman a little too much of a vigilante, Superman too much of a hypocritical "boy scout".
My guess is that we'll see them holding each other in contempt, growing into hate. And the climatic battle will be broken off so that a greater threat can be averted (or they look at the collateral damage they caused and turn away in disgust). No winners.
Then again, AOLTimeWarner is not gonna let Mr. Petersen do a ruined downtown, especially not in a post-11.09.01 climate.
Maybe Slashdot needs a new topic/icon for old info somebody dug up. Something with a paleontologist, maybe?
Sorry about the drift away from the topic, but it seemed appropriate. Fnord.
1. ThinkSecret is less than useless, since their rumor hit miss ratio is equal to "dart board" methods.
2. Ziff-Davis (ZDNet and C|Net) seem to be the source of this smokescreen. Also not the most accurate source of Apple news. Sometimes I get the feeling that the guys over at C|Net are more knee-jerk than factual (although David Coursey got real Mac-lustful after his trial with a flat-screen iMac).
3. The other rumor was the resurrection of the Cube, bundled with 17" flatscreens. After all, the Cube wasn't killed, just put into hibernation. Maybe they had to pull it back out of the freezer to make room for Ted Williams?
4. If it is true, then Apple needs to lower their inventory of current iMacs, as their price is going to drop as soon as the bigger, better version hits the market. The only explanation as to why they haven't done so yet is because they know it's a sign the sages look for. But it isn't a good reason at all.
5. There was a fifth reason to discount this rumor, but the RDF rays are wearing off. Fnord.
Apple has the experience with 3D, albiet discontinued. If Microsoft got persnickety, Apple could play the savior and offer its experience with QuickDraw 3D to the OpenGL community to work around the disputed patents. Granted, the team doesn't exist anymore, but QuickDraw 3D was killed because Apple didn't see any point in competing with OpenGL (although a lot of developers were upset at this, but them's the breaks!)
I would like to see this happen, as it would make Microsoft look like a bully (again), and make their purchase from SGI worthless.
As for the MPEG4 dispute, Apple's little scene *did* win them large concessions from the MPEG working group. Its main beef was that hobby QuickTime broadcasters can't afford the huge fees the MPEG group wanted to collect. This area is where Apple saw its edge over other proprietary streaming protocols such as Real.
Hope this answers your questions.
If you examine some of Lucas' comments in recent times, he views all of his movies as permanent "works in progress". It's why he wasn't afraid to touch up the first trilogy. This is a big difference to Spielberg's attitude.
...in about 20 years or so.
I think Lucas and Spielberg are well aware of their stylistic differences after their Indiana Jones collaborations. Lucas is probably afraid not that Spielberg would do it better, but that the end product would bear more of Spielberg's signature than Lucas'. In George's eyes, Star Wars is his Big Vision which he won't share any more.
My guess is that Spielberg won't get a chance, but I could imagine letting a young director loose on the Star Wars series as a retelling...
Well, according to this chart, Apple was hosting their websites on Solaris machines until late 2000. It looks like instead of just trashing the machines, Apple shuffled them off into the back rooms to handle lesser duties like SU and such.
I think this is a good idea, as 1) the machines are still good, and 2) it saves resources by using them as long as possible. Apple's server forays are still relatively new (and against the spirit of building personal computers), so it's natural that they'd had somebody else's boxen.