 |  |  October 2, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!) | |  |
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But First, A Word From Our Sponsors |
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Keynote Kapers (10/2/97)
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Did anyone else have a chance to tune into Steve Jobs' keynote address at Seybold? There are some great articles on it over at Webintosh, News.Com, and MacNN. We caught the last three-quarters of it, and were very impressed. Notably, for the first time, Steve spoke publicly about the Clone Wars (which he ignored completely in his MacWorld Expo address). For his PG-13-rated comments, take a look at our semi-edited-yet-still-quite-confusing keynote notes. His rationale was the standard heavily-publicized "we were giving the clonemakers several hundred dollars in subsidy with every machine they sold" bit, which, while not news, actually really does sound reasonable to us. (But as we've readily admitted before, we're more gullible than most.)
Additional interesting tidbits include: a hinted non-education eMate; PPC-native Applescript by Q1 1998; newly-focused marketing; improved retail presence; the success of WebObjects, and the announcement of a MacOS version; the success of ColorSync (and its support in a future MacOS version of Internet Explorer); and his take on the "Think Different" advertising campaign. He mentioned something that addresses a concern many of you have expressed via our online survey-- Some of you expressed disgust with Apple for using the images of people like Gandhi and John Lennon to sell computers. However, Steve mentioned that Apple had to secure the blessing of each and every person shown in the now-infamous TV ad that was broadcast last Sunday, or, in the case that the person was deceased, they had to get the blessing of that person's estate. He said that while many of those people had never been within 100 miles of a commercial, they and their families said, "We'll do it for Apple, because we believe in what you're doing." AtAT digs the commercial. We'd broadcast it during our show if Apple sponsored us. ;-) (And for the many, many people who said we need Apple product commercials instead of Apple brand commercials, Steve said that they're coming.)
Again, for more on this, see our slightly-more-edited-yet-still-pretty-confusing and increasingly-overdescribed keynote notes.
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1998: Apple UMAXintosh? (10/2/97)
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A few days ago, we said that of the Big Three, UMAX may have emerged as the lone survivor of the Clone Wars because they never publicly attacked Apple's policies. (Read: SUCK-UP.) Well, today a MacOS Rumors source provides some very interesting insight that shows there may be much more going on under the table.
According to this fly-on-the-wall, UMAX approached Apple with a plan to cut Apple's R&D expenses by taking on more of Apple's hardware burden. Apple plans to cut costs by reducing its development of hardware, and that's where UMAX comes in. If this source is to be believed, UMAX will work on motherboard designs for future Apple Macintosh computers. (UMAX makes some killer hardware; seen their CacheDoubler technology?) By now you've heard the plan favored by some Apple-watchers that Apple should divest its interest in hardware and become a pure software company; this UMAX partnership represents a similar strategy, without taking away Apple's primary source of income (selling Macs).
In addition to UMAX working on Apple motherboards, Rumors is reporting that Apple is outsourcing development of graphics cards to ATI, and other specialized cards to Radius. Apple is then in a better position to concentrate on software development and systems integration, the areas in which it has always shone. If this all turns out to be true, it sounds like a smart plan and a great step in Apple's return.
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