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Apple Sued By "Ex" (9/24/97)
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We know it's kind of old news, now, but we think it's worth mentioning the lawsuit that Exponential filed against Apple Computer. The Ex-PowerPC contender used to be pretty friendly with Apple. Intimate, even, in a sugar-daddy sort of way; as Exponential's biggest shareholder, Apple kept them bankrolled while they slaved away on the Next Big Thing in PowerPC-compatible chips, the BiCMOS-based x704, which Apple wanted to feature in high-end Wintel-killing systems.
What happened? Way-ell, turns out that the x704 wasn't turning out all that hot. Correction-- it was TOO hot, yielding more heat than your typical light bulb to squeeze out performance that, despite the chip's 433MHz clock speed, was pretty lukewarm when compared with the 750 (then G3) chips coming out of Motorola/IBM. So last May, suddenly the marriage was over-- Apple walked, saying that the Mach 5's and G3's were more their style.
Panicked, Exponential then turned to the clonemakers (remember those guys?), trying to find a market for their product. Imagine their surprise when they found that the cloners couldn't use the chip without a revised Apple ROM on the motherboard. D'oh!! Exponential alleges that Apple never made this clear. We've seen it all before-- Secrets will kill any relationship. With no market for their product, Exponential closed its doors.
So Apple made a $1.5 million initial investment in a product that never saw the light of day, and now they face a $500 million lawsuit from their "Ex" for causing their failure. Sound like an old episode of Dallas?
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 9/24/97 episode: September 24, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)
Other scenes from that episode: 18: Ooh, It's All So SORDID (9/24/97) Speaking of lawsuits, Apple's filed one of its own-- against a former employee. So reports the San Jose Mercury, who tells us that Gary Edwards, former head of Apple Imaging, is accused of accepting more than $1 million in bribes from printer component supplier James E. Grimes Co., in return for throwing said supplier $168 million in business... 19: "Hey, He Shot Bob!" (9/24/97) Hey, the new Bob LeVitus site is up and running. We've long been a fan of Bob's columns and books, because he manages to be informative while still being really, really fun to read. Go check it out, if for no other reason than to support another cool Mac-made site. We'd publicly like to state our sincere hope that the "Help Folder" column from MacUser survives the MacWorld/MacUser merger... 20: New Media in Action (9/24/97) Faithful viewer Larry Auerbach asks, "Is it true that Steve Jobs used to play Barnabas Collins on "Dark Shadows"? I'm not sure, Larry. Gimme a sec here to confirm this via the AtAT staff...
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