CUPERTINO, Calif. ------- JANUARY 18, 1996 ------
The massive pile of smoking rubble near Interstate 280 here in Cupertino was not the result of an earthquake or natural gas explosion, as officials first believed.
It now appears that the terrific explosion and fire at Apple Computer headquarters was the result of the first corporate-initiated airstrike on U.S. or California soil in U.S. history.
Sources within Apple have told newspapers that, in an effort to save Apple from an internal coup that would result in the breakup and sale of the company, embattled Apple CEO Michael Spindler called in elements of the California Air National Guard, based at Moffet Federal Air Station in Mountain View, Calif. to bomb and strafe his own headquarters.
Spindler allegedly called the California Air National Guard late last night and ordered the airstrike, using an Apple Macintosh Quadra A/V with experimental sound cards to simulate the voice of California Governor Pete Wilson.
Within Apple, Spindler is seen as a hero. "Cool! He called in an airstrike on his own position to save his company," said one internal Apple applications developer, who gave his name as "Scooter." "It was like one of those cool movies about, like, you know, Viet Nam, that I read about it on the Web, dude."
A memo to key staffers, reportedly written by Spindler himself, explained the need for the air strike to counter moves by Apple managers and board members to oust him in a corporate coup and to simultaneously increase the company's marginal revenue. "Existing Macintoshes, both those in use and those in warehouses, will instantly become collector's items and therefore increase dramatically in value," according to the memo, which went on to explain that "this action will therefore increase our margins on existing stock with no cost to our sales and manufacturing operations." Spindler, said to be ailing, is in seclusion. Attempts to reach him by phone mail and fax were unsuccessful.
Apple stock shot up 50% on the news, as Wall Street apparently agreed with Spindler's strategy. "Blowing up his own headquarters was a stroke of genius," said one Wall Street analyst. "This is the kind of pure creative, self-destructive genius we used to see when Steve Jobs was at Apple. It's like the old days. Mac is back!" Overall, computer stock stocks rose 75% as a result of the Apple news, then plunged 80% later in the day on rumors that Dan Dorfman had been seen having lunch with Jim Clark and Marc Andreeson.
The Spindler airstrike memo, obtained via Internet e-mail by this reporter, was fragmented and missing key information. Apparently, the strike was planned for January 1, but key aides to Spindler did not receive the e-mail until yesterday due to routing table buffer problems and addressing errors.
Cupertino city officials issued a statement at 10:00 PST this morning calling the air strike "an unfortunate incident that, while we hope we will all gain something from it, we hope it did not offend anyone of any race, creed, color, religion, thought process or emotional state, and we must emphasize that the City of Cupertino had no role in this incident if it did." Class-action lawsuits against Apple and the city, alleging emotional trauma resulting in a lost train of thought, loss of computing resources and interrupted Internet access have already been filed in California State Court.
Later, when told by federal officials that the city will qualify for both federal disaster relief funds and labor department funds for unemployment and job training programs as a result of the destruction, Mayor Bob Mellow said, "Cool. We applaud Apple and Mike Spindler for having the vision and courage to take this decisive action, and hope that our earlier statement was taken in the spirit in which it was meant."
In Redmond, Wash., Microsoft announced plans to build and detonate several networked low-yield nuclear devices at its own headquarters some time in 1997. "This is a project we already had underway," said a spokeswoman for Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. "We just decided that the marketplace won't be ready for it until 1997. Or 1998, if we decide that's when we really want to do it. Or maybe later. Right now, we're hiring additional staff, developing new technology and getting ready to copy Apple's idea, strategy and execution. Oops, I meant to say that we're evaluating previously extant competitive actions." The project, dubbed Curtains '97, is expected by analysts to be complete some time in 1999.
Apple announced it will sue Microsoft in federal court over the "look and feel" of the use of explosive devices in business and home computing product strategies.
Source is original for this:
In a surprise announcment, yesterday, Apple Computer said that it is finally doing away with the keyboard. Apple stated that the microcomputer user has suffered too long with this awkward and inefficient input device. According to an Apple spokesperson, the technology for replacing the keyboard with only a mouse is here and the computer user is ready for it. The spokesperson said that Apple has received a steady stream of complaints over the years about the need to constantly move the hands between the Mac keyboard and mouse. "The solution was obvious - do away with the keyboard completely."
Acknowledging that there are still a few Mac applications that depend on textual input in addition to graphical manipulation, Apple said the poor people stuck with such outdated technology have not been forgotten. They are introducing the Spinning Alphabet Wheel (SAW) to replace the keyboard. The SAW is a screen display object consisting of concentric circular strips showing all of the characters which normally appear on the keyboard. The wheel rotates continuously under character selector windows. The user selects a character by placing the mouse pointer in the appropriate window at the same time as the desired character is about the appear. "...and, ta-da, the selected character appears on the screen just as though it had been typed on an old fashioned keyboard."
"This is a marvelous new technology with plenty of room for growth." said the spokesperson. For example, the user can configure separate wheels for vowels vs. the consonants. Or, digits can be placed on their own special low speed wheel. "We have conceptualized the keyboard as a big, bulky menu selection device and replaced it with dynamic display menus instead. Apple will eventually replace all menus with their new Rotating Wheel Technology (RWT)."
When asked why the wheels have to rotate, the spokesperson said that Apple's engineers had considered using conventional "point-and- click" technology for the wheel. "However," the Apple spokesperson said, "we feel that this type of operation is too complicated for the typical Mac user. So, we have done away with the mouse button too. It is still hard for us to believe that the IBM world has stepped backwards in technology by providing two or more buttons to confuse the user. The IBM compatible sector, apparently, has not yet recognized that 95% of computer usage is devoted to experimenting with different fonts and character styles in documents"
Asked if this new technology would reduce the price of the typical Mac computer, the spokesperson countered that it would probably increase the price of the Mac. "After all, display space is already scarce on the current screen. We will now deliver Macs with two screens - one for the normal display and a larger one for the multitude of rotating wheels the user needs to access." Apple said that the user who is confused by complicated devices such as keyboards and mouse buttons will gladly pay a premium to avoid them. "In fact, the easily-confused user is our best customer" replied the spokesperson. "Not only are we doing away with the pesky keyboard, but we are also giving them something they have demanded for a long time - more screen space. This is definitely a win-win situation."
Beta testers of the new technology were impressed by its ease of use, but said there are still some minor problems to work out. For example, one tester left his machine unattended with the uppercase character wheel spinning at medium speed. While he was away somebody must have jarred his desk, moving the mouse pointer into the selector window. When he got back he found that his Word document now had one huge paragraph consisting of all of the characters of the uppercase alphabet repeated 2,539,987 times. "At first glance, this appeared to be a big problem. But, I formatted the new paragraph with 33 different fonts and 11 different type styles and it looked great. I hope that Apple fixes this problem before they release it, because these accidents can greatly increase the time spent formatting documents."
Cambridge, UK - 1st April 1996 - Acorn Group announce today that their proposed joint venture company with Apple has been called off.
An unknown group of investors have bought the majority of the company's stock and have effectively driven Olivetti's influence out. The joint venture, which was widely seen as a means for Olivetti to further its own aims with Apple, was called off as one of their first moves as the new majority shareholders in Acorn. A spokeman for the investors said last night: "Woo."
Acorn Education will continue its drive into UK education, a market in which it currently has a 30% share. It will continue to supply and develop high-resilience RISC OS solutions to both education and consumers through its dealer network.
Some took it too seriously, even violently. Brendan O'Sullivan, an Apple veteran of 10 years who was to be the head of the joint venture was only too pleased that it was dissolved this morning: "I once received a telephone call in the middle of the night. The caller told me, in a thick English accent, 'We know where you live'. I knew there and then that the joint venture could not go ahead."
David Lee, Managing Director of the Acorn Group said: "The pressure from Acorn enthusiasts was overwhelming. Fearing the worst, we had purchased three tanks and an anti-aircraft rocket launcher to protect ourselves at Acorn House. It is fortunate indeed that the decision to abort the joint venture came when it did."
Peter Bondar, head of Acorn's ART division said: "We are confident that people will look at our powerful StrongARM solutions and return home to weep over their wasted investment in Intel technologies."
Along with the super-fast, low-priced processors will be a new version of RISC OS. Mr. I.S.V.Query, head of Acorn's developer network, said: "We were told by one of our developers that RISC OS 3.6 would not work with the StrongARM. We have therefore contracted a freelancer to rewrite the whole thing on his own."
Enthusiasts who are worried that this will push the release date back by years need not be concerned. The development will be carried out by none other than Saul Bligay, who promises not to put any viruses into it.
A projected release date is 1st April 1997.
Acorn Education supplies leading information technology solutions including hardware, software, services and peripherals.
Acorn Risc Technologies designs and develops advanced technology products based on the ARM microprocessor. The division will support and develop existing RISC OS products for education and other markets.
Acorn Online Media focuses on the sales and marketing of products, services and licenses which exploit emerging world standards in interactive multimedia, from Internet to broadband digital iTV. It promises not to make any more of its partners go bust.
Acorn Network Computing was established in February 1996 to develop designs for a range of network computing products.
Apple Computer, Inc., a recognised rip-off merchant in the information industry, creates powerful solutions based on easy-to-use personal computers, servers, peripherals, software, online services and personal digital assistants. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) copies, manufactures, licenses and markets other people's ideas, technologies and services for the business, education, consumer, scientific and engineering and government markets in over 140 countries.
Apple's home page on the World Wide Web:
http://www.apple.com/
Acorn's home page on the World Wide Web:
http://www.acorn.com/
Apple Computer, Inc Apple, the Apple logo, and Macintosh are registered trade marks of Apple Computer, Inc. QuickDraw and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. PowerPC is a trademark of International Business Machines and used under license therefrom. All other brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders, and are hereby acknowledged. Acorn and the Acorn device, Om and the Om device, Acorn Risc Technologies and the ART device, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Acorn Group plc.
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