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Apple's Fruitful Future 204

Posted by Zonk from the get-the-joke dept.
Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
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Apple's Fruitful Future More

Apple's Fruitful Future

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  • Forget the 30th birthday... (Score:5, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @04:28PM (#15037279)
    I can't wait until Apple is 64! And Apple (Beatles) will probably sue them for being 64! :P
    • what they tried to do to my uncle Jimmy Pepper, after he was promoted to Sergeant in the army.
    • Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm 64.

      A question both Jobs & Gates may soon be wondering.

    • Re:Forget the 30th birthday... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ZzzzSleep ( 606571 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @05:10PM (#15037637) Homepage Journal
      When I get older, losing disk space, many years from now,
      Will you still use me to send an email line, birthday greetings,
      or slashdot whine?
      If you used me 'till quarter to three, could I crash once more?
      Will you still boot me, will you still root me,
      When I'm sixty-four?

      Hmm------mmm---mmmh.
      You'll be older, too.Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay
      with you.

      You'll need to be handy, mending a fuse, when my ps is gone.
      You can knit a sweater by the fireside, you can't use me if my chips are fried.
      Going to swap meets, digging for parts, who could ask for more?
      Will you still boot me, will you still root me, when I'm sixty
      four?

      Every summer we can vist one infinite loop, if it's
      not too dear. We shall scrimp and save.
      And sitting on your knee, that newton from e-bay

      Open a shell prompt, drop me a line stating point of view.
      Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting
      away.
      Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
      Will you still boot me, will you still root me, when I'm sixty
      four?

      *Yeah.... I know it's lame....*
  • Have a Mac which can run XP when required.

    That's one way Linux is getting into the workplace. All the PCs at my work are dual boot, Linux/Windows.

  • "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."

    Well, unless you sent this from somewhere east of +2 GMT, I'd say you're a bit early on this one...

    • It doesn't have to be an April 1 joke, since any visitor to onmac.net [onmac.net] can announce to themselves that dual-booting XP and OS X on a Intel-based Mac is quite straightforward, thanks to the work of narf and blanka.

      Although, it probably is a (feeble) joke, because Apple didn't do anything to encourage dual-booting (other than switch to Intel chips) and Mr Jobs is unlikely to celebrate his rival's OS appearing on his precious hardware, even if it does bring a few extra sales.

  • The first Dud (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @04:32PM (#15037313) Homepage Journal

    From the Forbes article: The Lisa

    WTF? How many years ago was that? Was the Lisa actually a bad thing at the time? Nothing compared to it, with the sole exception of the "system which came after it" the Mac.

    Enough about the Lisa thanks. Apple had a go and they got it right in the end.

  • Apple is trying to slow down and wait for M$ [yahoo.com]. But with all the Vista delays I am not sure how much longer Steve Job should wait.
  • Just the capability of dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4 would certainly put Apple into Business in a big way. Although, I would think that being able to run Windows applications inside OSX would make more sense from their perspective. Both would be the best, since some people might just like Apple hardware, but just want Windows. And some people might like OSX and just need to run a few Windows applications.
    • The failure to dual boot though isn't apple's fault, but the fact that winXP is outdated, and Vista isn't supposed to support EFI natively for 32 bit CPU's.

      Combine that with the fact that Apple uses dedicated hardware most of which don't have windows Drivers and you have a large problem.

      No Tomorrow's announcement will be that Steve Job's apologies to Bill Gates and say that all future Mac's will come with Vista Pre-installed instead of OS X.

    • Dual booting in the workplace presents on difficult problem

      What if you require the use of two applicaitons- one written for Mac and one written for Windows- at the same time. Ever heard of multitasking? Virtualization remedies provides a better solution in that case.

  • Dual booting not mentioned in the article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by catbutt ( 469582 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @04:35PM (#15037342)
    or is this just an early april fools joke?

  • Xen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by norkakn ( 102380 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @04:36PM (#15037348)
    It'd be slicker if they did something like xen and allowed windows to be run as a guest OS at near full speed. That'd be more historically consistant as well.

    • Re:Xen (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Daniel_Staal ( 609844 )
      Yeah, that'd be slick. And it worked real well for OS/2...

      (Of course, times and perceptions have changed, and Apple might be able to pull it off. Maybe.)

  • What, nobody's saying Apple is dead? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @04:40PM (#15037386) Homepage
    Now I'm worried.

    In this confusing world, the one comforting, constant, bedrock, fundamental certainty has been that the pundits would explain how Apple is moribund, in a death spiral, and will be gone in about a year. The first time I heard that was in 1985. Not counting, of course, the people in 1984 that said the Mac was dead on arrival because it didn't have an 80-column screen and cursor keys.

    Circa 1990, I worked in a Fortune 500 company which cancelled all its Mac skunkworks projects, due to Apple's imminent demise, scaled back all its Windows projects, and beefed up all its OS/2 projects, because Gartner's colorful graphs showed OS/2 would pass not only the Mac but MS-DOS and Windows in, if I recall correctly, less than two years, and would dominate the market by 1995.

    Nobody is saying Apple is dead? Uh-oh, I'm worried. Maybe it's time to start short-selling Apple stock.
    • Your comments are a nice attempt at humor, but there probably are people out there that feel this way.

      Apple's been rumored to be dying forever, and have had a tiny slice of the computing market all that time.

      Maybe now that they are doing well, rather than shorting stock you should buy it -- it could mean they break past the 10% marketshare ceiling.

    • I can top that (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mgabrys_sf ( 951552 )
      I worked for a major maker of desktop publishing software for the Mac and PC. In 1997, the co-founder (and resident wacko) decided "apple was dead" and "no more macs would be purchased within the company". Two problems with this logic - one - 78% of their revenue was from Apple users - and 2 - new USB-only macs were coming down the pipeline which nullified all the hardware dongles being used. Not to mention things like new dev-hires who needed new macs to test and develop on, testing on all hardware for com

  • Uh, what? (Score:2, Informative)

    by porcupine8 ( 816071 )
    That article linked to with the supposed XP rumor says nothing at all about dual-booting or Windows on Macs. Just Intel iBooks and video iPods. And it's from the beginning of February.
    • "Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."

      No where does it say that It's referencing the article. This is a separate subject. RTFBlurb.
  • All future Apple products will support the Evil Bit.

    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/01/143 4209 [slashdot.org]
    • All macs will now be gBooks, you can buy your gPod and get music on gTunes. All theyre gonna do is search-and-replace appple.com replacing i with g...

      I heard the name might be change to something like Grape or something.
      • If your list of product names starts off with "gbook," "gpod," "gtunes," and "gmail," I think there's a pretty strong argument for staying as far as you can away from the term "grape."

  • Its in our enterprise (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SimplyBen ( 898147 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @04:43PM (#15037424)
    I work for a credit card processing company and we're a Mac company. We develop on our dual G5s and our sales staff uses powerbooks and iBooks. We get the luxury of using OmniGraffle over visio (its cheaper too!). We did break down and buy office, but we still use iCal and Mail.app over entourage. Our server environment runs 1U IBM x306s running fedora core 4. I can definately say we've saved a significant amount by not going windows. http://www.mobileevolution.com/ [mobileevolution.com]
  • Steve: Today, I've got some amazing news! The new Intel Macs will support dual booting with Windows!

    *clapping and cheering*

    Steve: April fools!! Haha, I'm so funny.
  • "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
  • MAKE IT TALK WITH SERVERS BETTER.

    What makes Wintel PCs what they are is that people are accustomed to connecting these things to servers when they log in.

    That experience doesn't exist (to the best of my knowledge) with the MacOSX environment. Drives can be mounted at power up but I don't see the same experience that people are accustomed to in Windows.

    I have an integrated environment where there is Mac and Windows on the same network sharing access to files. They both access the Novell and Linux server fi
    • It's not really a complete answer, but OS X can connect to OS X Server. I believe you can store profiles, desktops, files, etc, on the OS X server transparently. I have no experience with OS X Server though, so I don't know to what extent it works compared to a Windows client/server situation.
      • http://www.apple.com/business/ [apple.com]

        Business Networking

        Apple computers are designed to be interoperable and work seamlessly with your Windows-based systems. With Mac OS X, Mac and Windows computers can easily share the same network, files, and peripherals. In managed networks, Mac and Windows systems can connect to the same file, print, mail, web, and directory servers, and Macintosh computers can be used with Active Directory, Exchange mail servers, and Microsoft's VPN server. In addition, Apple computers su

    • I'm not sure exactly what the problem is that you are trying to describe, but:

      1) Macs can connect at login. Just drag a mounted share point into Login Items. Duh.
      2) Macs do give you a notification when a server becomes disconnected. All the way back to OS 7, I think.
      3) You can actually use bash, applescript, whatever, to write a script to automatically re-mount on disconnect. Go learn how.
      4) We have roughly the same number of PC's here as Macs, and I certainly can't distinguish any difference in the

    • Re:How to get Apple in the workplace (Score:5, Informative)

      by gozar ( 39392 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @07:08PM (#15038448) Homepage
      That experience doesn't exist (to the best of my knowledge) with the MacOSX environment. Drives can be mounted at power up but I don't see the same experience that people are accustomed to in Windows.

      I have an integrated environment where there is Mac and Windows on the same network sharing access to files. They both access the Novell and Linux server files. Windows does it better. Mac will lose its network mountings without cause that is obvious to the user and without a mounting script, the user would generally need to restart the computer (and the apps) to resume normal work. In windows, if users are dicconected from a server, the user is notified.

      If you put the shared drives into the Login Items for the user, they'll automatically mount when the user logs in. On my network I've never had OS X just lose connections for no apparent reason. If I'm on a laptop and put it to sleep, I'm notified when I open it back up if it can't reconnect to any servers.

      For a managed environment, you'd want to put in an OS X server. The OS X server can bind to Active Directory (and I'm assuming eDirectory) so your OS X clients will mount the users Home Directory automatically. You also get all the managing capabilities for your OS X clients. Networked home directories are really nice, and if you set it up right, you can have your users log into a Windows client, Linux client, or OS X client and have the same Desktop and Documents folder automatically.

      OS X also doesn't have problems that you see with Windows and its roaming profiles.

  • Apple computers are 'feel good' consumer items (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @05:00PM (#15037568) Homepage
    I had the serial number 71 Apple II (I wrote the little chess game that was distributed with early Apples on the demo software cassette), bought an early Mac (I wrote the ExperOPS5 commercial product on it), and I still use Macs a lot for my work (although I use Linux more).

    For me, Apple products are "feel good" products. Visually they look great compared to the competition. The software always seems a little more solid (probably because of only needing to support their own hardware).

    You can certainly get more bang for the buck with a PC clone running Linux, but Macs with OS X are great products. When I bought my first Mac, they were very new and one day I brought my Mac into work because I wanted my secretary to type in a big stack of notes that I had written on a business trip. I immediately got pulled into a meeting and when I got out of the meeting my non-technical secretary was done - it just took her a few minutes to figure out the Mac -- try that with a PC in 1984!
  • Jeez,

    What is it with Forbes?

    I feel like I'm in an elevator while reading a short, single column 'article' squashed between adverts, and even then the content contains such rubbish as

    "The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ), where he now has a board seat via the acquisition of his Pixar (nasdaq: PIXR - news - people ) animation studio."

    Come on people, lets stop linking to this rubbish.

  • Newton (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mad Ogre ( 564694 )
    For Apple's 30th they need to release a new NEWTON based on the iPod. Give it a sizable full color high rez screen, a small HD, with a load of good features... make it PC, and Linux compatible so others can use it too. Then the Newton wouldn't be such a flop. Make it a competitor to the Orgami. I'd buy one.
  • They forgot the Apple III Computer [oldcomputers.net] Of course, this was an emminently forgetable computer anyway (only on the market for 4 months), so I can forgive them for forgetting.

  • Tomorrow's press release (Score:5, Funny)

    by Un pobre guey ( 593801 ) on Friday March 31, 2006 @05:28PM (#15037781) Homepage
    Cupertino, CA - 2006-04-01 Apple Computer Corporation announced today what is possibly the single greatest technological advance of the past 500 years. Steve Jobs, accompanied by various lesser industry luminaries were invited to make this solemn announcement before the United Nations Security Council, which was convened in a special emergency session. News networks around the world suspended all other news coverage in order to report and comment live from New York as events unfolded. In the United States, all civil aviation was ordered to remain grounded starting 6 hours prior to the announcement, and remained so until three hours after.

    Industry and commerce ground to a halt throughout the world, as workers, peasants, and billionaire executives alike tuned in to monitor the proceedings on radio, television, internet, and a variety of wireless and satellite communications. Most retail businesses in the United States and Europe were closed for the day, in preparation for the announcement, which was expected to change human civilization as it is currently conceived or understood.

    Clergy from Mecca, to Rome, to Salt Lake City, to Tokyo and beyond paced rooms as they waited and brooded over the vast consequences of the announcement. In many Third World nations, the poor and ignorant masses were so overcome with fear and anxiety, that rioting and mass suicides began to spread on all continents, barely held in check by legions of police and military personnel, tenuously in control of their own emotions.

    The entire planet fell dumb with awe as Jobs made his momentous announcement: Apple Computer had devised a method to capture and process data that was for practical purposes impervious to the causes of erasure and data loss that plague modern computing devices. No amount of electromagnetic fields could cause erasure, and data written with this technology was expected to be readable for a thousand years or more under reasonable storage conditions. Even more mind-boggling, the reading and writing of the data was technology independent. It would not be necessary for users hundreds of years in the future to preserve today's technology. Jobs demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, the ease with which future generations would be able to access such data.

    The new technology, revolutionary yet environmentally friendly nanotechnology-based laminae of compacted cellulose fiber as the data substrate, and finely machined graphite rods or thin tubes of optically dense viscous gel deposition units, were shown in a variety of decorative colors. Jobs demonstrated a bright yellow substrate which was preformatted with fine rulings on its surface to guide the application of data. He showed data deposition in blue, black, red, and green, and claimed that Apple could provide deposition units in any arbitrary color. The substrate was to be made available in pads of 100 laminae, and the deposition units in boxes of one dozen. Later in the day Staples and Office Depot made surprise announcements of the imminent availability of this technology in their stores worldwide.

    • That is awesome. That's the most obfuscated description I've ever read.

      Unfortunately, I'm not going to tell you what it describes, that should be an exercise for the reader.
  • ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace

    ZDNet must have never visited my workplace. People are pretty free to specify their own laptop models, and the percentage of Apple-branded laptops spotted in a meeting room is often 50%, and has been as high as 100%.

  • Apple's solution for people with Windows apps isn't dual-boot - it's CrossOver. That's system-level emulation, versus dual-boot or launching Virtual PC. Apple has a few Windows apps running already this way (though not for you to try yet).

    Can a Linux-ite elaborate? I only know what the reps tell me.
  • From the ZDnet article:

    So why are Macs still such a rare site in the enterprise?

    Because of incompetent hairpieces in management who wouldn't know a good product if one jumped up their ass.

    Or because of humpfuck articles that ask dumbass questions like "why doesn't Apple get a job?"

  • Apple will unveil their new Red State division that will broaden the company's appeal beyond their left-coast latte-drinking white-earbud hipster base.

    The division, headed by Steve Jobs look-alike [paulosnews.com] Tucker Carlson, will begin to bring out new products that cater specifically to this untapped market.

    The new Intel iBooks will feature optional American Flag engraving, Sudden Mud Sensor, and birdshot-proof screen protection.

    Also, all new Macs will have the option to boot up to the traditional Mac startup ch

  • Here's a nice BitTorrent link with all the keynotes since Steve Job's comeback (1997) + the introduction of the original Mac in 1984 (>10GB!!!):

    click [thepiratebay.org]
  • I've was always a big fan if Thinkpads. They were always the best laptops for me. Good hardware, sturdy, and I having been involved with projects under IBM supervision I know what there QA is like (hell ;-)). Leveno taking things over however has made me doubt things. What kind of support am I going to get? Are they going to spy on me?

    You know what? I started out on Apples. I owe the fact that I'm now a software developer on the fact that my schools always had computers (which happened to be Apples in one s
  • Wow. Now parents shop for school next year before it's out this year. Poor kids.

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