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Buh-Bye, LaserWriter... (4/12/98)
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The cuts go on, as Apple continues to hack away every chunk of itself not focused tightly on its slim, trim business plan (whatever that may be). The next appendage to get the axe may be the LaserWriter division, if Mac the Knife's absinthe-soaked ramblings can be trusted.

Okay, yes, selling off the printer line makes sense. Apple's not a printer company. They can't be making much money on the things. Mac users have plenty of alternatives to the LaserWriter, so it doesn't hurt us much to see them go. What bothers us about the potential sale is that it was the LaserWriter that essentially put Apple into the desktop publishing driver's seat. Selling it off seems almost like a symbolic surrender, a tacit admission that Apple's going to cease innovating in new, groundbreaking areas with the potential to change the world...

...Not! As if! Geez, it's just a line of printers, for crying out loud. Get a grip. As far as we're concerned, Apple should get as lean and mean as it possibly can, in order to kick royal OS butt with Rhapsody and Sonata. Once they've got the top priorities taken care of, they can start breaking ground in new, uncharted areas again. We're not worried. Much.

 
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From the writer/creator of AtAT, a Pandemic Dad Joke taken WAYYYYYY too far

 

The above scene was taken from the 4/12/98 episode:

April 12, 1998: A team of analysts expects that Apple will post a profit of about $21 million. Meanwhile, Mac-eliminator Dan Updegrove's soft white underbelly is exposed, and Apple considers cutting the LaserWriter loose...

Other scenes from that episode:

  • 620: The Number To Beat (4/12/98)   The official estimate from the analysts is in, only days before the final results are posted; the consensus among twenty-two analysts polled by the research firm First Call Corp. is that Apple will post a profit of $21.23 million for its second quarter...

  • 621: The Dirt on Updegrove (4/12/98)   "Updegrove... Updegrove... Now where have we heard that name before?" Okay, true, it's been a few months since this was big news in the Mac world, but Dan Updegrove is the director of Information Technology Services at Yale who sent that infamous letter to the incoming freshpersons, informing them that Yale would not support Macs beyond the year 2000, and that all students should therefore buy Wintel PCs instead...

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