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

To: Pravin Kamdar who wrote (9267)	3/11/1998 1:39:00 AM
From: JT	Respond to of 213173

Wednesday March 11, 12:08 am Eastern Time Apple in entertainment project -analyst By Therese Poletti SAN FRANCISCO, March 10 (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc (AAPL - news). is working on a project to develop a new generation computer-entertainment device, according to an industry analyst. ''There are signs that Steve Jobs over the next 120 days will shake up the computer industry by introducing a very low-cost system,'' said Richard Doherty, director of the Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y. Doherty said Jobs, Apple's co-founder and interim chief executive, is spearheading the bid to develop a low-cost portable device combining a set-top cable TV box, Internet access and a CD or a DVD player. ''It looks like every single person at Apple is working on this project,'' Doherty said. ''It's the 'Manhattan Project' of Apple Computer.'' News of the project first broke on CNET's News.com, an Internet-based technology news service. ''We don't comment on rumors and speculation,'' said Russell Brady, a spokesman for the Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple. Apple, which recently shut down its Newton hand-held computer division, has a lot of technology to work with in its research coffers, analysts said. ''Think about all the pieces they have, the PowerPC (chip), QuickTime (for multimedia content creation),'' said Louis Mazzucchelli, a Gerard Klauer & Mattison analyst. ''They have the Pippin experience under their belt and they learned something with the Newton.'' Apple's Pippin was sold by the maker of the virtual pet Tamagotchi - Bandai of Japan - and combined a game console that used a television screen and accessed the Internet. Doherty said Apple had not laid off many members of its Newton team and they were now working on the new project. Apple is currently adding staff, after laying off staffers last year as it moved to cut costs and restructure the company amid big losses and a steep market share decline. Doherty said the new device aimed to provide low-cost access to the Internet for the educational market and would include more entertainment features. Analysts differed on when Jobs might go public with the project. Jobs is scheduled to give keynote addresses at the Seybold Publishing conference next week in New York and at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas April 6. ''NAB would be the venue for this,'' Mazzucchelli suggested, adding that Apple was expected to introduce a new PowerBook notebook computer at Seybold, code-named Wall Street. Doherty said the project could be one reason why Apple delayed its annual meeting from February to mid-April. Apple is now expected to hold its annual shareholders meeting around April 22. ''(Jobs) will wait for the exact climate,'' Doherty said. ''He will feel the pulse.''

To: Pravin Kamdar who wrote (9267)	3/11/1998 7:05:00 PM
From: BillHoo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213173

<< Also, Microsoft will bespending so much time and effort porting MS Office to the Merced, that Office on the G4 will be released much later. What is a platform without applications?>> So are you saying that Merced will have no applications ready for release? Office 98 already runs native on PowerPC architecture. G4 is a PowerPC chip. There are hundreds of applications on the PowerPC. To date, I know of none on Merced. Unlike an upgrade from 486 to Pentium to Pentium II, Merced is a whole different platform. G4 is an upgraded chip in a currently running platform - PowerPC. I agree with you. What good is Merced without applications. I deal with quite a few corporate IS people. They agree that if Merced requires a massive upgrade of OS and applications software as well as hardware, they are not going to buy it. Everyone stays on Pentiums with the current software packages. Then, again, if you look at Apple... They've changed platforms twice in their history. Users had to drop Apple IIs for Mac and they carefully phased into PowerPC. Maybe Intel could transition as sucessfully as Apple. -Bill_H