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Of CEOs and Apple TVs (3/23/99)
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Holy cow, is it that time of year again? Apple's annual shareholder meeting is tomorrow, and it totally slipped in under our radar. Not too many people have been talking about it before now, which is probably due to Apple's relatively stable financial footing. Robert Morgan's latest RFI Report states as much, predicting "a lack of thrills and chills." When there's no red ink, what's there to talk about? That's not to say that a few interesting rumors haven't surfaced, however...
As faithful viewer Chris Murphy (who waves "hello" to all his friends out there) points out, Larry Ellison's been flapping his gums at the press again. Larry (the CEO of Oracle, a member of Apple's board, and Steve Jobs' bestest buddy) has a long and glorious history of "letting slip" interesting little tidbits about Apple's future product plans. This time, according to a CNET article, he hints that Apple's future includes a role as "the great provider of digital appliances." What exactly does he mean by that? We can't say for sure, but it sounds a lot like the kind of stuff that Apple Recon's been going on about for years and years now-- that whole "Golden Convergence" of computers and the Internet with TV and other home entertainment electronics. Will your next TV have a translucent casing and a big honkin' Apple logo on it? In addition, Larry says Apple's working on price, portability, and "great new display technology." It'll be interesting to see if any of this comes out at the shareholder meeting.
But any formal revelations of Apple's future product directions might take a back seat to more dramatic news, if MacCentral's correct. They're saying that rumors are flying about how Steve Jobs finally plans to drop the "interim" label from his title and officially become Apple's permanent CEO. Well, that would be nice, but frankly, we've heard that one before; remember back when "interim CEO" sounded like a bad thing? These days, we can't imagine that anyone's really expecting Steve to jet any time soon, but back then, every time Steve was scheduled to make a semi-public appearance, rumors flew that he'd be taking the job on a permanent basis. Whether this comes to pass or not, we're plenty happy either way-- provided that Steve keeps doing what he's been doing.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/23/99 episode: March 23, 1999: What juicy surprises does Steve have in store for the annual shareholder meeting? Meanwhile, Apple confirms that all five iMac flavors are alive and well (but hard to find), and the renaming of Rhapsody causes some angst to Mac OS license subscription holders...
Other scenes from that episode: 1417: From the Horse's Mouth (3/23/99) Time to rein in the Hounds of Rumor? Apple's always so tight-lipped about what it's doing that rumors often expand to fill the void of official news. Most recently, the complete and utter lack of iMacs in the retail channel (yes, a few people tell us that there are literally zero available to order, and stores are limited to stock on hand) has led to much speculation that Apple may be flushing their inventory to start fresh with a new iMac model any time now... 1418: What's In A Name? (3/23/99) Uh oh-- looks like Apple's playing the Name Game again. The Name Game is the way in which Apple manages to dodge clauses in licensing agreements by arbitrarily changing the names of their upcoming products; it's sort of a semantic shell game...
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