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Oracle Still Looms (2/17/98)
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The initial rumors of Oracle sniffing around Claris' popular FileMaker Pro database product seemed to come to naught; instead of selling off the application, Apple recently stripped Claris of all its products except for FileMaker and Home Page, laid off several hundred employees, and rechristened the remains "FileMaker, Inc." to reflect the unit's new focus on its flagship product. Now, however, Mac OS Rumors is saying that Oracle may be interested in buying the whole newly-spun-off company in an attempt to grow its database business beyond the corporate world in which it currently makes its living and into the home/small office market, which is growing rapidly.
Indeed, the implication is that the reorganization was performed expressly for the purpose of readying the product for a selloff. One of Rumors' sources inside FileMaker claims that there's widespread talk of Oracle and Apple lawyers secretly roaming the halls of the FileMaker headquarters. (Does that remind anyone of the reports of Lee Iaccoca touring the Apple campus a few months ago, which spurred the rumors of Iacocca taking the CEO spot? It seems that these "mysterious tours" by outside entities are always followed by rumors of big changes.)
From a financial standpoint, it would perhaps be unwise for Apple to sell off FileMaker; as the best-selling database product for Macs and the second-best-selling database for Windows, it's consistently profitable and continues to get better with each release. Well, okay, version 4.0 was pretty anemic, but we hear incredible things about 5.0... All we are saying is give Pro a chance.
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SceneLink (460)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/17/98 episode: February 17, 1998: The hills are alive with whispers of how camouflaged Macs are creeping undetected into Apple-hostile territory by speaking Unix with nary an accent. Meanwhile, Oracle is still eyeing FileMaker Pro and preparing to pounce, and no one but Intel could be behind the recent publicity surrounding the x86 performance bug, in an attempt to downplay the PowerPC's dominance...
Other scenes from that episode: 459: Guerilla Sales Tactics (2/17/98) Just how different can Apple think? According to Don Crabb in a MacCentral "Rumor Reality Report," pretty darn different indeed. In an attempt to bypass the "No Macs Allowed" purchasing policies becoming more and more common in the corporate world these days, Apple's teamed with a couple of third-party resellers to paint its G3 Powermacs as Unix workstations-- which are often much more welcome in many companies. The G3 Unix Workstation, currently offered by Hughes Data Systems and SciTech International, is a standard Powermac G3 bundled with Tenon's PowerMachTen version of Unix for PowerPC, as well as Connectix's VirtualPC and your favorite and mine-- Mac OS 8.1... 461: Wow, Man, the Colors... (2/17/98) This just in: another conspiracy theory from a faithful viewer whom we'll keep anonymous to protect his welfare. Let's just call him, oh, I don't know... how about Brian Pickerill? Anyway, "Brian" reveals the real...
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