I know that you guys don't give too much weight to Recon, but usually they are more carnival than this clandestine article. I am not too sorry to say that I don't buy it. However it does raise my angst a little.
Doug
February 98:
19 Feb 98: 0800 EST
The following was received by RFI yesterday afternoon and is being posted without comment
by us:
To: Our Quiet Place.....
The Cannavino story's already making the rounds in these parts. The responses
have been VERY scary. Jobs is out of his league, again. Woba, if Apple's board
heard this info, it might NOT BE A BAD THING. Should I post this on Mac the
Knife?
Seems like the big C.'s going back to Big Blue to tell the boys that "Apple is
Jonestown after all, Heaven's Gate has been rebuilt" and that "Jobs is insane."
This is having a VERY bad impact on morale at Apple.
The only up side to this is that Jobs may be forced out. The board needs to
realize this and hustle. Cannavino's still wondering "How the hell can people this
smart work with an asshole this wide?" And he's got good cause. But they have
to deliver to have a chance at anyone of his quality again.
As far as Jobs. Much of the "positive spin" that we've seen lately is only the
product of hard work done by others.
As Robert's pointed out, the AMP is not something thought up at 1 Infinite Loop
in the last quarter and brought to market by Jobs' infinite prowess.
Rhapsody's been completely mismanaged. As the boarders pointed out, Lotus is
porting to it. Lots of big companies (Adobe, Macromedia, even Msoft) are
considering the move or have products fully or partially ported but are waiting to
"See the green light." No green light, fact is, it's yellow turning to red. This time
this year Rhapsody was supposed to be a dream come true. There HAVE
BEEN technical hurdles that might be insurmountable in making this thing a user
OS, but that's no reason not to make it the "Media / Web Developer's Dream."
Disaster.
Meanwhile, Jobs has positively destroyed parts of Apple in his quest for control.
What was the reasoning behind gutting Newton and the emate? Stupid, stupid.
The smart thing to have done ... and everyone knows this ... was to set up the
alliance with Sony and IBM early, drop the price points on the Newts and
eMates and sell them like hotcakes until late 98. Palm Pilot anyone? THEN the
AMP platform would be ready to go, with DVD instead of CD-ROM. There
was no reason why Newt's OS couldn't run on top of Allegro CE. The AMP
and future NEWTs/emates would've been "Now with MACOS!!!" but the
market would've been there. But a needless fear of excess inventory and more
important, a fear of taking money away from the bottom line to invest in a tech
that would only reap rewards in a few monthes, not to mention Sculleyitis,
dropped that idea.
That was the MISSION APPLE MISSED.
But as far as the day's events go. There's another piece of the puzzle. A big buzz
is being heard over here that Apple's seriously fucking around with the terms of
the quicktime licensing deal by asking for royalties for every damn disk with a qt
movie on it.
"The hell we'll pay" is the attitude. Apple's already going to have development
platforms AND royalties for AMP. Any idea that every enchanced cd or dvd
will have an "Apple Tax" will simply not fly. Look for a hostile takeover and
evisceration in that case. How quickly could Sony or Disney take out Apple if
they wanted to? Very quickly. And they'd have a lot of support too. Unlike MS,
Justice wouldn't be stopping them if they tried. Silicon Valley is NOT the biggest
industry in California. Not by a long shot.
What would the consequences of such a move be?
Jobs gets his ass kicked back to Pixar and beyond. The AMP becomes
IBM-Sony Media Player, but with a likelier WinCE spin on it. No credit for
"The Next Big Thing."
Pixar, as we all know, is an unwelcome player in Hollywood and is NOT a big
entity either. Jobs is out of his league. All it will take is Unca Walt to decide to
rerelease "Snow White" at the same time as the next Pixar event to wipe out
Jobs. Anybody seen that one before?
The platform is eliminated, key technologies being sold off to SUN, IBM, Moto
and others at bargain basement prices.
Think Different. Oh yeah...
Note:
We'll comment on this after you've had a chance to digest it all. And FWIW, do not dismiss
the source of this message as some "insignificant entity." Said source has "juice" where it
counts.
And things were going so well....
Enough said. For now..... |
