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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Palmberg who wrote (5908)	11/5/1997 5:56:00 PM
From: BillHoo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213173

"a network computer (from Apple) tied in with Lucent to sell to big biz and oracle to give it something to do" I find that unlikely at present. Here's my narrative of the environment at Lucent from my perspective. It's relevant because I dismantled the last of the Apple systems and network at my Lucent Technologies site. <<sound of distant trumpets as the scene dissolves to a flashback>> It felt like the Japanese taking of the Philippine Islands, Fall of Saigon, and the Borg taking over the Enterprise all rolled into one! Pointy-haired managers kicked out of AT&T and transplanted to Lucent made the decree of "No More Macs!" The electronic engineers at Lucent didn't seem to like it and felt they had the power to hold on to the Mac. I warned them that those pointy-haired managers from AT&T are corporate sharks, and that "all you rocket scientists are nothing but a school of tuna in a shallow pond!" These were the same corporate sharks responsible for destroying much of AT&T and weakening it to a point where it had to trivest. Now the once mighty deathstar is a mere long distance phone carrier. Dreams of conquering the world with AT&T communications products all eaten away by the rats that had invaded its home. They did not head my warning. The big-wigs felt that no one could tell them what to do. Next thing you know, the bigwigs in the engineering group were replaced... either by forced retirement, departmental transfers, or aggressive corporate sharks flashing numbers indicating money saved through acquisition of Intel hardware. They made no mention of all the money they would have to pay hiring more tech support and paying overtime to support Windows boxes. They didn't know what hit them. Of course, if I wasn't so busy troubleshooting 95 and NT problems, I would have developed a strategy to delay the shrinkage of the Mac population. Actually, because of all the problems NT and 95 posed, the Mac network (slated to go down in 4 months) was stretched out to over a year. In the final months, I watched the once-robust Appletalk network taken down one zone at a time. At it's height, the Macs were spread out all over New Jersey. Just before the final collapse, I saw a two strongholds still active in Middletown and Holmdel (the centers of Lucent aka Bell Research labs). I fired off over fifty Simpletext probes before I was cut off. Each Simpletext document held a picture of Bill Gates as the Borg with the caption "We are MicroSoft! Resistence is Futile! You will be Assimilated!" My message was a simple one. Join the Mac Resistence! I left them in departmental folders in hopes that someone would be curious and open the document to see what it was about. I had no idea who was on Mac and who had a PC. But I did know that if they could open a simpletext document with a pict in it, they were likely a Mac user. Within a month, I attracted a small group of a half dozen resistance fighters to exchange information about management policies and arguement directions to change management decisions on the Mac. They (the resistor's) consisted of graphic designers and software developers. The few people allowed to keep their Macs. In the end, I lost contact. My only fear is they had been assimilated. Perhaps they had escaped and made their way to a position where they could convince Lucent to cooperate with Apple. I don't know. Perhaps by the grace of Almighty God, Macs shall return! -Was this narrative a bit melodramatic?- It actually happened that way. Take this story as a warning to those who still have strong Mac populations. Throw out those Intel carpetbaggers as soon as they knock on your door! -Bill_H