On 3/26/2000 1:27 AM, Ed Kummel [mailto:tech_ed@yahoo.com] wrote:
>Rumours....schmourors (try pronouncing that!)
>I have lost all faith in Apple's ability to "wow"
>me...
>I don't believe that Jobs has any tricks up his sleeve
>left to wow me with...but, I'm an open minded
>man...and I sit here with a devout agnostic
>stance...so I say to Jobs and Apple, "show me, wow me,
>let's see if you still 'got-it'"
>ed
>web/gadget guru
Eh?
They do, and they have. I've been wowed a lot in the last couple of
years.
Besides reviving the company, here are some recent things they've done to
wow me:
1. AirPort - cheap, affordable, super-easy-to-set-up, FAST, wireless
networking. Now I see Dell, Compaq, 3Com all jumping all over 802.11,
making a lot of noise, now that Apple got people's attention....but they
are STILL far more expensive than Apple's.
2. My PowerBook G3 (I've owned lots of powerbooks, starting with the 170,
but G3 Series are SOOOOO nice)
3. The iBook (don't own one, but I like the fact that a pretty decent
portable G3 laptop is now in range of EVERYONE's pocketbook)
4. The PowerMac G4 (used my friend's, damn fast!)
5. Moving to USB and firewire. Visionary as usual, a definite "wow". I
was already spoiled by the hotswappable drive bays and PCMCIA cards in my
G3 laptop. Now with the newer G3 laptops (and desktops too of course)
you can hotswap ANYTHING, even old serial, SCSI, ADB, etc devices with
adapters. I can even add USB and Firewire PCMCIA cards to my older G3
Series laptop and do the same thing (have USB, about to get a firewire
card.)
As usual, Apple got plug-and-play right. First, and always....and now
even better (anyone remember Microsoft's first public demo of THEIR
implementation of USB....crashed right on stage with Mr. Bill looking on.)
And MacOS X Client looks like it's got the potential to REALLY wow me.
The more I learn about it, the more I like what I see.
I use non-Apple systems all day every day at work. None of 'em wow me.
Well, as a programmer, I'm pretty fond of the Alpha microprocessor and
OpenVMS operating from Digital/Compaq, but Compaq, as usual, is screwing
OpenVMS up since taking over Digital. That's why I'm glad Apple wasn't
sold off and one of the founders is back "in charge" and it shows -- a
buyer would just have screwed it up. Steve has put the "wow" back into
Apple. I'm sad he killed the Newton, but glad he revived Apple.
I'll even be somewhat happy if Apple takes the PalmOS and improves on it
in their usual amazing way, perhaps with the Newton print recognizer, and
so that it works even better and more tightly integrated with Macs. By
selling Claris Organizer to Palm and working closely with Palm in other
ways, Apple has already done great things for the Apple/Palm world (and
even some nice ones for the Mac/Newton world since you can get Palm
Desktop for free and dump your Newton data into it!) I use a Palm as
well as a Newton and while a Palm sure ain't no Newton, it's small size
does make it VERY handy at times.
I'd be happier to see MacOS X running on a new Apple handheld, perhaps
the Palm emulator developers use running on it. Since the Palm is really
similar to an original Mac Plus from 1986, I think they could do it.
- Bill
_____________________________________________________________________
\\ /, "Ink Different" at Info-Newt, the site for Newton PDAs
`( Info-Newt Newton news & info web site: http://www.info-newt.com/
\ Newton FTP Software archive: ftp://ftp.info-newt.com/
= GOT A NEWTON QUESTION? Visit: http://www.info-newt.com/faq/
******************************************
This NewtonTalk Message brought to you by:
EVOTE.COM, the ESPN of Politics on the
Internet. Visit EVOTE.COM for all the latest
news on Campaign 2000!
Visit http://www.evote.com today!
******************************************
Need Subscribe/Unsubscribe Info?
visit http://www.planetnewton.com
******************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 03 2000 - 09:41:15 EDT