intel macs sooner than expected?

[Tim]

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1359

they think so. The powerbook is the one most in need of an update, so they think it'll be first. I just got a new powerbook, but I'm not that worried as it's not always a wise thing to jump on the first revision of a model. My lease will be ready to flip when they release the updated dual powerbooks. :d

[Child of Cupertino]

I have wondered if Apple will be forced to include THIS (http://web.archive.org/web/19980526043818/www.leoville.com/sounds/pentium.wav) in their ads??

[Tim]

lol.

I doubt it.

[Noize Anomaly]

maybe one of you apple historians can explain this to me

"It should come as no surprise that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is reportedly leading the charge, with his heart set on making 2006 the next 1984."


i was only 4 years old and too worried about my transformers to have paid very much attention to apple corp.

[chief]

Once the powerbook goes intel, i'll probably buy one. Not to say the ones out now are bad...

[Tim]

one piece of advice.... don't. wait.

wait until they've worked out the bugs, and introduced the next generation dual core intel chips into them. That is precisely when I'll be flipping the lease on my new one. :)

[Child of Cupertino]

"making 2006 the next 1984."

i was only 4 years old and too worried about my transformers to have paid very much attention to apple corp.

Sonny, pull up a chair and let me tell you a tale of vision, blindness, of courage, fear, of revolution, stagnation... and overall a HELL of a lot of money and greed.

This is a very bold claim indeed. 1984 is a pretty important year in personal computing, and if Jobs thinks Macintels will equal the impact of the first widely available Macintosh (with the GUI intact within the OS) then he better cut down on the brown acid (another reference before your time, NA ;) ).

You see, 1984 was the release year of the Macintosh operating system; the first "widely and commercially available" operating system with a graphical user interface and mouse. Nothing out on the market for the general public even remotely looked and worked like it at that time. It was a revolutionary moment that triggered several other GUI-based OSes (Amiga, GEM among others) and the eventual trend to Windows on PCs -- as soon as Microsoft got that working properly of course! Microsoft came out with Windows some time in 1985, but it wasn't usable until Windows 3.1 in 1991; the year that Windows started to gain some userbase traction.

Now, my emphases in the previous paragraph is intentional, because Apple actually released a larger, business oriented computer system with the macintosh OS the year before, called "Lisa". At $10,000.00 a pop, however, they didn't move many. The Macintosh computer of 1984 was MUCH smaller AND much cheaper (US$2,500, IIRC).

But even before Apple and the Mac OS, there was another company that TRULY created much what we all use as an interface, today; a company that will probably go down in history as failing to execute on the huge potential of what they had -- even worse than Apple itself back in the eighties when they could have gone directly at Microsoft by releasing Mac OS for x86 PCs (at a time when that would have made sense -- NOT NOW). That company is Xerox Xerox had the geniuses that actually developed much of the GUI interface, the mouse, and Ethernet technologies. The "old guard" brass at Xerox's board, however, failed to see the potential in this stuff. At one point, Apple CEO Steve Jobs struck up a deal with Xerox to use some of these technologies in their OS, and the rest is history.

So, 1984 was HUGE; a ripple that we continue to feel to this day as tens of thousands of Macs came onto the market, radically changing how music is created, how children are taught and virtually gave birth to desktop publishing (to mention only a few). So, for Jobs to hope for 2006 to be the next 1984... well, you can see how that is a damned bold statement... if he said that at all, of course.

Some sites for further info:

A timeline of the graphical user interface on computers. You can see that Xerox had this working way back in 1973!
http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html

Links to that seminal Apple shareholder's meeting when the Macintosh -- and the classic "1984" ad -- were introduced. Along with a groundbreaking computer, Apple also had a groundbreaking commercial. Called "1984", it is based on the plot of George Orwell's classic book, "1984", only in this case, IBM is "Big Brother" ;) . Directed by Ridley Scott, this commercial was the first "concept commercial" (not talking about the product itself at all, but emoting a feeling and image associated with the product), the first commercial to be directed by a major film director, and the first ever one-minute long commercial. It started a new trend in commercial advertising, is regard as the best commercial ever made... and yet it was shown only once during the 1984 Superbowl:
http://www.mac-essentials.de/index.php/mac/14276/

Covering the development and release of the Macintosh on a factual basis:
http://garamond.stanford.edu/mac/index.html

Very interesting inside stories from the men and women who developed this stuff:
http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?name=Macintosh

Bill Gates' letters of attempts to convince Apple to license the Mac OS to other PC makers in mid 1985. By now, you'll be interested to know that Steve jobs -- cofounder of Apple -- had been FIRED FROM APPLE. Apple rejected gates' suggestion to go wide with Mac OS, as they were addicted to the hardware revenues of their computers. licensing the Mac OS for any PC would probably hurt hardware sales. but, as Gates has shown with DOS and later Windows, the OS and applications is a money-maker, too! Apple passed on it:
http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html

Early 1990s and fearing the oncoming Windows 95, Apple succeeds in porting Mac OS to the PC, then KILLS IT:
http://www.geektimes.com/michael/tech/computing/hardware/products/apple/macintosh/misc/project-star-trek.html


PS: A few years back, Turner Broadcasting in the US produced a movie about almost ALL of this (not the efforts to licence mac OS for PCs), called "Pirates of Silicon Valley (http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009NSCS0/qid=1131457322/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/701-2244308-1912364)", based on the book, "Fire in The Valley". It looks at the very beginnings of both Apple and Microsoft, the unadulterated guile of Bill Gates and his ability to negotiate, as well as the commercial defeat of Apple at the hands of MS. I bought it. A very interesting look at this important time in human history.

[Tim]

I tink someone... got into the chocolate covered expresso beans, again. :d

[Child of Cupertino]

Hey, I copied that post into a note for future reference. It's pure gold, baby! PURE GOLD!!

[Tizerfish]

That company is Xerox Xerox had the geniuses that actually developed much of the GUI interface, the mouse, and Ethernet technologies

You got any links on this ? :) I'm sure your Right, I just allways thought the US goverment Created the technologies and protocals, I don't know why :hjy:

[Child of Cupertino]

Eventually clicking through starting here from my previous post, http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html , I came across documents that state that Xerox did it -- including Xerox' Palo Alto Research Centre ("PARC"), where all the magic happened:

http://www.parc.com/about/history/
"A patent memo describing a new networking system uses the term "Ethernet" for the first time. A few months later, an entry about Ethernet in a researcher's lab notebook reads: "It works!" This new protocol for multiple computers communicating over a single cable will spawn a series of sophisticated networking protocols enabling distributed computing and re-architecting of the internal computer-to-computer communication within Xerox copiers and duplicators."

Also refer here:
http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/announcement.html

"Without the advantage of hardware interrupts, its designers supported an event-driven interface by creating a nonpreemptive multitasking architecture. They designed the first commercial Ethernet protocols and developed a suite of network services including a world-wide naming architecture that anticipated today's URL's."

As for the Internet itself, I think it was originally called ARPANET, developed by some American universities -- and the military:
http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa.html

Vice Prez Al Gore did not -- nor never claimed to have -- invented the internet. He did, however, spearhead legislation to open ARPANET up to the general masses. hence, the Internet.

[Noize Anomaly]

thanks a lot for the info man. that is very interesting stuff. i can't quite see jobs saying 2006 will be the next 1984 but what do i know....

just one thing about all this confuses me....

It was a revolutionary moment that triggered several other GUI-based OSes (Amiga, GEM among others) and the eventual trend to Windows on PCs -- as soon as Microsoft got that working properly of course!

since when did windows work properly?

[Child of Cupertino]

since when did windows work properly?

hey good point!

(Yow! That's gonna leave a welt, NA ;) )

[Tim]

I've always thought they started to get it right at windows 2000. Then they went screwy again with XP.

[Noize Anomaly]

wonder how vista is gonna be?

[Child of Cupertino]

wonder how vista is gonna be?

Actually, yesterday I stumbled across Microsoft's own staffer blogsite! Called "Channel 9", there are A GAJILLION video interviews with a lot of Microsoft "Project Managers" (they've got A MILLION of 'em). There are lots of code-talk and demos in these videos. A very interesting site. Check out this thread I posted at ehmac about it for a link:

http://www.ehmac.ca/showthread.php?t=33360

[Tizerfish]

I've always thought they started to get it right at windows 2000. Then they went screwy again with XP.

Yah 2000 and 2003 is actaully very well made conciduring what it's based on, XP home is a POS :ntm: and XP pro isn't much better

I think everyones hoping Vista is going to be decent, hopefully... it will not kill as many computers as it installs on like XP did :eri:

its just such jokes they have a "Dock" like feature, i wonder if they ever will come up with a real pure innovation that doesn't involve coping

[Child of Cupertino]

I think everyones hoping Vista is going to be decent, hopefully... it will not kill as many computers as it installs on like XP did :eri:

Well, the system requirements -- especially for Avalon -- are looking pretty steep. I did watch a video at that Channel 9 site I referenced above showing how their "gadgets" work. it was on a laptop -- presumably a damned FAST laptop. The system responded quite nicely, although you could see some slight lag when he resized a Desktop window. I get a bit of lag on most of my apps.

[Tim]

they can copy all the little eye candy trinkets they like, but until they actually fix the operating system and can get it to run as well as OS X, it's all candy and whoopie cushions as far as I'm concerned.

[KO_9]

Just say no to Intel....I mean drugs!:hys:

[Noize Anomaly]

i just don't understand how after sooo many years, a company with that much money can't even get a half-decent product going?