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A MacMate in the Palm (12/7/98)
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Palm this. Palm that. Everywhere we turn, we hear about Palm PDA's. Not that we're bitter, mind you-- we don't want you to think that we're just Newton-clinging holdouts of a bygone era. (Well, okay, we are.) It's just that we wish we could have the best of both worlds-- the ease of use and elegance of the Newton experience combined with the size, weight, cost, and applications of the Palm. For the longest time, it seemed like we were simply dreaming a wonderful dream-- which went up in smoke when Apple killed the Newton project entirely. But now we're starting to dream again.
First of all, there are all these rumors about the MacMate. The MacMate is supposed to be a Mac OS-based handheld computer that will be released sometime in 1999, with a feature set better than the Newton MessagePad 2000. If it turns out to be true, that'd be a great thing. But we're starting to suspect that the MacMate won't be Mac OS-based at all; have you noticed how often Palm and Apple have been seen together lately? Apple's just posted web pages on Palm that are so cheerleader-y, there's got to be something behind them. Palm, meanwhile, bought Claris Organizer from Apple and is in the process of turning it into the new conduit software that connects your Palm to your Mac; a beta is available now. In addition, Apple's been hard at work trying to lure Palm developers to the Mac side of the fence, by giving them deals on iMacs and the like, in an attempt to make the Macintosh the Palm development platform of choice. And then there are those interviews with Steve Jobs in which he admits that Apple had even tried to buy Palm a little while ago. Yessirree, there's a lot happening between the two companies.
Which is why we're suspecting that the MacMate is simply going to be an Apple co-branded Palm PDA. We're not too thrilled about that prospect, because if we wanted a Palm, we'd have bought one by now. The other possibility, which we're really hoping for, is that Apple and Palm will soon announce that they're working together on the MacMate. Imagine the possibilities; Apple never sold off the Newton technologies, so the handwriting recognition engine is available, as are all the other cool things that made the Newton OS such a joy to use. Imagine the offspring of an Apple-Palm alliance. Mac OS Rumors claims that such a partnership is already in the works. Oh, to dream the impossible dream...
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SceneLink (1199)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/7/98 episode: December 7, 1998: Is ClearType the epitome of Microsoft innovation, or just further proof of the company's inability to come up with anything new? Meanwhile, Apple may be juicing up the next iMac for serious game performance and maximum decor impact, and a secret back-room rendezvous between Apple and Palm may result in some rather intriguing offspring...
Other scenes from that episode: 1197: Big Dog, Old Tricks (12/7/98) Like any other wildly successful entity, Microsoft faces a lot of charges these days-- both in and out of the courtroom. They've been called ruthlessly anticompetitive, mediocre creators of shoddy software, and a whole slew of other things, too-- but the one thing that really seems to stick in Bill Gates' craw is hearing that his company isn't innovative... 1198: Next Year's Model (12/7/98) The fact that a new, chunkier version of the iMac is in the works is fairly old news these days. In fact, that particular rumor has been circulating for long enough that a lot of people have even stopped speculating about what's going to change in next year's model...
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