At 30, Apple still has appeal

[onehandle]

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- As the storied company prepares to celebrate its 30th birthday April 1, Apple Computer Inc. will have brushed off its bruises from product failures and arguably misguided decisions to emerge with a shine that's more than skin-deep.

Its brand name and products -- from the Mac to the iPod -- resonate as both hip and innovative.

snip...

Many analysts expect that Apple's market-dominating iPod -- which works with both Windows and Macintosh machines -- and its new computers based on Intel Corp. chips -- the same used by Windows -- will help grow Apple's slice of the PC market.

Meanwhile, Apple's financial health is better than ever. It posted record revenue of nearly $14 billion for its fiscal 2005 and is armed with more than $8 billion in cash.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/03/27/apple.turns30.ap/index.html

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Bananas have a peel

[candice]

2. I love Apple products...and

the iPod video and 15-inch Powerbook are among the best products ever! Is it ever hard to have to have a sorry PC on my desk for work purposes. Steve Jobs has Al Gore on Apple's board and was a big Kerry supporter. Gates was a big Bush supporter. Maybe people who voted for Bush should open their eyes and try Apple's OS X. It won't make them so crazy.

[tridim]

7. Gates is not a "big Bush supporter" at all

He gives money to both parties for business reasons. While he certainly is a ruthless businessman, he's also the most charitable individual in the history of mankind. His philanthropy and humanity far outweigh his political donations.

[AndyTiedye]

17. Apple Corp. is 99% BLUE

$78,250 to Democrats
$0 to Republicans
$500 to Others
$78,750 in Total Contributions

http://www.buyblue.org

[AndyTiedye]

18. They're Letting Us Get Macs at Work Now

My new work machine is a Macbook Pro.

My latest home machine is a Powermac quad G5.
Photoshop flies on this machine.

[onehandle]

21. Must be a small company.

I had to get an act of Congress to get a Mac at my old company. 100,000 employees.

[AndyTiedye]

22. Actually it's quite a big company, but somewhat decentralized

not as many employees as your prior employer though.

[ananda]

3. I love my Mac.

I mean, I really love my Mac!

[we can do it]

4. I Really Love My Mac, too

I hate it when I have to use a crappy PC.

[Vidar]

5. Apple's appeal is the reality of Windows.

[tridim]

8. And the reality of Windows should not defined by Mac users

If it was, Microsoft would have folded sometime in the mid 90's.

[megatherium]

19. That reminds me of the clever video that appeared not long ago.

It had Bill Gates' voice-over, describing the features of the new Windows Vista OS, while those features were being demonstrated on screen. But the rascal who made the video substituted screen shots of Mac OS X performing the operations Gates was describing. The point of course is that Windows Vista isn't out yet but OS X can already has those new features. And now MS is delaying Vista to January 2007.

But honestly, I'm not an OS bigot. There isn't such a big difference between OS X and Win XP. If you know what you're doing, neither OS should cause much trouble, and the experience of using a typical app is much the same in both OS's. I use both (Mac at home, Win XP at home and at work).

[NYC Liberal]

6. Best of all - Apple has a 99% rating from BuyBlue.org.

$78,250 to Democrats
$0 to Republicans
$500 to Others
$78,750 in Total Contributions

[NC_Nurse]

9. I just got a new iMac for my birthday last week.

SWEET! :D

[chookie]

10. Boy oh boy I love my Mac

I've been using one model or another for the last 20 years -- I have loved them all. I love my iPod too.

[kutastha]

11. Been using Apples for 21 of those years

and loving every minute of it. My 3 year old 17" PB is still going strong and has only had a handful of kernel panics (thanks to Norton). I will likely use this thing for the next four years in residency - though I still miss my Pismo (what a machine!). I also go back to the original 5GB scroll wheel iPod. Oh the days.

Against my father's wishes (where's the software? Where's the paperclip?) I got my mother a mini for Mother's Day last year - she had his hand-me-down Dell and had no idea how to fix the crashes. Now she wonders why she ever touched the infernal thing.

Happy Anniversary Apple - see you in another 30.

[KittyWampus]

12. Saw an All-In-One Mac for about $1600. It looks do darned appealing

My Gateway with Windows has so many problems and shuts down so often...

[Chovexani]

15. I just got one a couple months ago

It really is the best computer I've ever had the privilege of using. My mom is so jealous she's about ready to ditch HER crappy Gateway and get a Mini Mac. :D

[Ezlivin]

13. In 1985 I purchased my first Mac - A Mac Plus

It had a 9 inch black and white screen, 1 MB of RAM, a 3.5" floppy drive and no hard drive.

Now I want a Quad-Core G5 that can run OS X "Leopard" and XP/Vista simultaneously, has a 30" color monitor, 8GB of RAM, no floppy drive and a 250GB RAID 0.

Ain't technology (and Apple) grand?

[stlsaxman]

23. i had a Mac Plus, too!

i even got on the "internet" with it back then... (arpanet actually, just a little shell program that couldn't do graphics, Mosaic had just been invented. a little 14,400 mo-dem and a "buffalo freenet" account...ah!)

those were the days... thanks for letting me reminisce!

[Ezlivin]

25. I started on Compuserve

I also tried Apple's eWorld, which was pretty cool at the time.

14,400 baud! Wow. I can remember upgrading to a 2400 baud modem and thinking it was blazingly fast.

Thanks for some more memories!

[Chovexani]

14. I'm a lifelong Apple fanatic

My very first computer was an Apple IIe when I was a kid, and I've owned nothing but Macs ever since...a Mac SE, Power Mac 6100/60, Strawberry iMac 333Mhz. A couple months ago I replaced that iMac with the machine I'm typing this on, an absolutely gorgeous 20" iMac Core Duo. Words can't describe how thrilled I am with this machine. The remarkable thing is how well my games are running under Rosetta. Neverwinter Nights runs better under Rosetta than the PC version did on my ex's Dell laptop.

If I could find a way to hook my game consoles up to it, I'd get rid of my TV.

[A Brand New World]

16. My son is an employee of Apple in Cupertino. He works with the Safari

program. He loves it! It's always been his dream to work for Apple ever since he got his first Apple computer at age 6. Not many 23 year olds can say they have their dream job. The only problem is it's in California and Mom & Dad are still in Ohio.

It's nice to see that they support Democratic ideals.

[MagickMuffin]

20. Happy Anniversary Apple

I have owned a bushel of Apple's computers. Currently using my G4 PowerBook, iMac (swivel screen, which my partner and I did surgery on to replace hard drive), my partner has a G4 tower, and just got a 17" G4 PowerBook.

We also have 2 mac clones Radius 7200's, and 1 Umax 9600 clone, before Jobs returned to Apple and quit allowing clones to be built. All of our machines have worked perfectly, except for having to replace hard drives, and installing a faster CD/DVD drive.

Just a refresher course for the Geeks amongst us.

Back in the 80's, we started out with Commodore's, I don't know how many people remember the campaign back then but there was a campaign to always undermine Commodore. I can remember all the MSM issuing the demise of Commodore. This went on for a while until it couldn't recover from all the bad publicity, and the company went out of business.

But before Commodore's demise we invested in several Amiga's. That is the machines that were being used at ARCO for their computer graphics. My partner worked as a contractor there and after BP bought ARCO, they let the contractors buy the Amiga's. We ended up with about 6 machines to play around with, they were one of the first computers to offer Broadcast quality programs like NewTek the makers of LightWave 3D, Aura, Frame Factory,
Inspire 3D, the Calibar, and the infamous Video Toaster Flyer.
Lightwave was used by the Babylon Five SciFi series. Plus other movie productions.

Side note: We had entered a video contest, and our prize would have been a hand held scanner, but the vendors backed out. However, NewTek decided that we shouldn't be denied a prize so they gave us a copy of their award winning software Lightwave 3D, and a video toaster. Definitely better than the hand held scanner by far.

Flash forward a few years and the exact same thing started happening to Apple. The MSM started their campaign in the demise of Apple. Yes Apple was starting to struggle under the leadership of that over priced of a CEO John Sculley, who wasn't that concerned whether or not Apple would falter away into oblivion.
When Jobs came back and took back control, Apple started to turn things around.
I wasn't to thrilled about his arrangement with Gates, but it did provide the monetary value Apple needed to keep the company afloat.

But beware when the MSM starts reporting when a company is doomed. They are promoting a line of propaganda.

One more thing I should mention, I have worked on Window machines and it was a nightmare:argh: ! So, I wouldn't consider myself a Mac sob, I just know from experience that I have never worried about the security risks with my Mac. And yes I also realize that there are people out there who want to hack the Mac, but to this day I have never had a virus. Never had to reinstall any programs like you have to do with Windows:crazy:....

Apple :yourock: Happy 30th Apple, hope you are last another 30 Plus... :party:

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. And in court today for stealing Apple Corps' music trademark

The Beatles' record label Apple Corps has accused Apple Computer in court of breaching a trademark agreement by selling music.

Both companies agreed a deal over the use of the apple trademark in 1991, which stopped Apple Computer from entering the music business.

But Apple Corps claims the US company's online iTunes Music Store has broken the agreement.

The hearing opened at the High Court in London on Wednesday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4854408.stm

I think Apple Computer will lose.