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Easy Come, Easy Go (1/27/98)
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Once again, the rumors proved correct--Claris is no more. Apple has just reabsorbed most of the products of its consistently-profitable wholly-owned subsidiary, leaving Claris with only the immensely successful FileMaker Pro and Claris Home Page. With this change comes a new moniker: Claris is now FileMaker, Inc. and will focus exclusively on the growth and development of the award-winning database product. You can read Apple's press release for more information.
Returning to the Apple fold are all other Claris products, such as Em@iler, ClarisImpact, ClarisDraw, and Claris Organizer, as well as the Swiss-Army-knife-style ClarisWorks suite and Mac OS 8. Claris Home Page will likely be integrated into FileMaker Pro. Apple presumably hopes that adding Claris' revenues to its own plate will bolster its bottom line in this traditionally weak second quarter (you know, kind of like how eating the brain of your slain enemy gives you strength), though the costs of the reorganization will surely dampen the effect.
But what would this story be without at least a little dirt? According to MacWEEK, Apple planned not to transform Claris into FileMaker, Inc., but rather to sell the database program and reabsorb the company entirely. However, potential customers such as Oracle and Microsoft weren't buying, so they moved to plan B. Personally, we can't believe any reasonably solvent company would pass on a chance to buy FileMaker, but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
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SceneLink (396)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/27/98 episode: January 27, 1998: Apple reabsorbs its offspring Claris, in an attempt to bolster its precarious bottom line, which teeters nervously in the balance during the dark days of Q2. Meanwhile, spicy details about the upcoming sub-$1000 Mac continue to "leak" from Cupertino, and Microsoft confirms that Windows NT is the future for consumer Wintel users...
Other scenes from that episode: 397: More on the Cheap Box (1/27/98) Apparently, news about the upcoming sub-$1000 Mac for the home market isn't the most closely-guarded secret over at Apple these days. Rumors about the machine's specs have now filtered down into the "legitimate" Mac press... 398: Bluescreens for All! (1/27/98) It's official: In the home market, Microsoft is planning to migrate away from the Windows 95/98 code base in favor of a "consumerized" future version of Windows NT. A Business Wire report has the details; first some home-type features like games acceleration will be added to Windows NT 5, and then a full-fledged "Windows NT Consumer" will ship after the year 2000. While this news surprises very few people, it's relevant in that it confirms just how spookily similar Microsoft's and Apple's OS strategies really are...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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