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Shoulda Called It Win99 (10/14/99)
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Finally, a quickie about our pals in Redmond, who are still struggling to get Windows NT 5 out the door. Renaming the product "Windows 2000" a year ago may have been just a little too prescient; the next version of Microsoft's heavy-duty professional/server operating system was most recently due on store shelves before the end of this year, but according to a PC Week article, now the company is saying that the product won't be available until February of next year. And the world reacted to the news with a deafening lack of surprise.
The most likely venue for the launch is now a Windows 2000 trade show in February. One can only imagine what'll happen if the ship date slips still further; a Windows 2000 trade show without Windows 2000 sounds like a surreal experience. But technically, Windows 2000 will ship this year; the company now plans to release the final version of the operating system to manufacturing on December 5th. It just so happens that users won't actually be able to buy Windows 2000 until it gets out of manufacturing six to eight weeks later. In other words, Windows 2000 will ship this year in much the same way that Internet Explorer is an inseparable integrated component of Windows 98. (Or, to pick an analogy closer to our heart, when Microsoft says that Windows 2000 will ship this year, it's not unlike when Steve Jobs says an Apple product is "available immediately.")
As it turns out, most Windows NT users appear not to particularly care that the OS has slipped to next year, since the "daunting" task of upgrading is prompting many customers to decide to hold off on starting until the end of next year anyway. There's also the little matter of cost; apparently some research group called Giga Information has determined that a 5,000-seat Windows NT company will have to shell out a staggering $5-8 million to upgrade, "even if an organization replaces all of its desktop hardware." So a couple more months before the product is released is just a couple more months during which customers can hock their watches and lick stamps in the evening to raise the necessary cash.
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SceneLink (1847)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/14/99 episode: October 14, 1999: Steve Jobs breaks Apple's stock curse by confusing Wall Street into sending AAPL soaring. Meanwhile, irate customers get their wish, as Apple reinstates the G4 pre-orders that were cancelled just the day before, and Windows 2000 slips again, now due in February of next year...
Other scenes from that episode: 1845: Now THAT'S Different (10/14/99) By George, we think he's got it! Leave it to Steve Jobs to figure out a way to break the long-standing Apple Profit Stock Curse. See, for the seven quarters prior to Q4/1999, Apple's final earnings have been not just profits, but profits higher than the Wall Street analysts were expecting... 1846: World's Not Ready (10/14/99) Unfortunately, it appears that the Macintosh community sometimes needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future of computing. Remember the uproar over the iMac's lack of a floppy drive? Well, here we are a year and a half later, and not only is the iMac wildly successful, but Apple has also omitted the floppy drive from every computer it now produces, and there's nary a complaint still out there...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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