My 2 cents on the last few posts from soup and tom ...
BTW, this might get kind of long, as I am home today on the 1st
with a cold and have nothing better to do than bore all of you....
maybe not !
Hmm, looks like some serious loyalty mixed in with a dilusionary
sense of optimism!!
I have a CS degree and have worked with all kinds of hardware, OS's
and software development for practically all systems. I have never
been a Apple fan, nor Microsoft either (grouping aapl and msft
in terms of their OS's). I work with a lot highly technical
computer people as well as complete computer illerates, and gotten
a sense over the years what is important to people (objective to
me of course). Given all this, I currently have a lot of money
invested in aapl !
Hmm, why would I do something like that if I repeatidly post negative
topics on this thread and seem to have a negative outlook for aapl ??
I have watched aapl slowly desintegrate over the years just furthering
my lack of respect for aapl. Then a few years ago aapl did something
which was so gutsy, that I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with
respect..... That was, moving to PowerPC. They gambled with their
entire customer base at that time for a new chip design which would
be incompatible with all current software.... But they had some help
with an 68k emulator which would actually make these "screeming"
machines seem slower for existing sw. But aapl went ahead hoping that
over time people would start to buy native ppc sw.... And they did!
This wasn't why I bought aapl though. I took me a few more years
to see aapl piss away all that respect I instantly had for them
with ppc. They had a totally scalable RISC chip, but a 10yr old
OS with many facelifts!! Sure system7 was a big deal (32bit and
multitasking.... Uhh, nope!) Their entire enhancements to sytem 7
have been comprised of third party's Control Panels and Extensions
being bundled in with System7. This is no future plan, or vision,
this is confusion and caos ! In early December I signed up for one of
Be Inc.'s free demos of BeOS at their hq in Menlo Park. I walked out
of that building very impressed. They started from the ground up
built a *contemporay* OS imploying the latest Computer Science
into a screamingly fast OS with a MacOS emulator almost finished,
and a port to PowerMac already!!
That very same day (Dec. 20) is when aapl signed the deal with NeXT.
At first I was kind of pissed at appl for going that route, but
after it settled in, it didn't really matter to me. The fact of
the matter is that the clock has run out for aapl. They have had
FAR TOO LONG to do something about their OS problem, and did
absolutely nothing besides put some money in the pockets of third
party Control Panel and Extension writers!! BTW, my money went
into aapl early December before the trip to Be Inc., but with the
news of a Be Inc. merger.
If any of you are, or know Mac freaks (no offense!), you would also
know that they are VERY loyal, and all HATE Microsoft --- Even a
stronger loyalty than Amiga had! This loyalty is aapl's only chance
of surviving, PERIOD!! The Newton isn't going to make or break
aapl, nor is the PowerBook. It is a committment to excellence and
the technology to back it up. It takes the forethought of a great
leader (Have to give some credit to Gates on this one) to not only
make a killer app for a decade, but to stay competative, not by price,
but by technology and inovation. Apple has the money and the intelect
to make this happen, just no leader... Unfortunate. I am glad that
Jobs is back, He rode the asses of the original Mac team so hard that
their fingers blead from so much coding !!!
I think soup is a little shallow with his reasons for aapl. A leader
is what makes a company great, a leader who knows *what* products
to make, and *how* to market them, and *who* to market them to.
Jobs has had enough years to relax with NeXT and Pixar, now back to
work !!!! I think aapl can pull themselves around, but it will be
hard. They are at the same crossroads IBM was at a few years ago,
and now look at them. Quick restructuring, NOT eliminating R&D,
clever advertising, and their existing customer base helped save them.
If anyone got this far in the post, sorry for the length, I was
starting to feel like a football coach right before the big game !
Happy New Year to all, hope it is a great year for investments !
-Brian Theodore |
