R. Mansfield's Profile

  • http://thislamp.com
  • Oct 25, 2007
  • 5
  • 3

Latest comments made by: R. Mansfield

  • What timing! I got my first Cube YESTERDAY! I couldn't afford one when they were first released. I had to wait seven years, but now she's all mine...
    United StatesR. Mansfield had this to say on Jul 19, 2007 Posts: 5
    July 19, 2000: Cube Introduced
  • One correction...although you are right that Apple did, in fact, lead the way with CD-ROM drives, they were very late to the game to include burnable drives, And Steve Jobs admitted as much. Most of the major PC makers were including drives that burned CDs before Apple did. A very rare blunder in Apple's history of innovation, to be sure.
    United StatesR. Mansfield had this to say on Jun 27, 2005 Posts: 5
    The Cost of Being First
  • Yes, Filemaker is owned by Apple. If you go to the company information page on their website, http://www.filemaker.com/company/index.html, you will find the statement, "Ownership: FileMaker, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)." So, again, Apple could add Numbers to iWork for a spreadsheet, include FileMaker for a for a "professional edition" and they have a full fledged suite that would finally take the place of Appleworks and compete on some level with MS Office. That might be a viable option because one thing to remember is that MS has never ported their database Access to the Mac. There used to be a Mac version of FoxPro, but MS killed it.
    United StatesR. Mansfield had this to say on Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 5
    Apple Preparing for a Microsoft Free Future?
  • A couple of points... You say that the public was not privy to the resons behind the decision to adopt NeXT over BeOS, but that's not entirely true. In Gil Amelio's book, he gives quite a bit of detail behind the decision. What is really interesting is that unknown to most at the time, there was a third contender for a new Mac OS: WindowsNT. Evidently, Amelio was in talks with Gates up to the last minute to create a version of NT that was Mac-like in its interface, but was nothing but Windows under the hood. On paper, the plan almost made sense in that NT was already ported to the PowerPC in the early days, and it wouldn't have been too much work to port programs from Windows to the Mac if the same architecture was running underneath. Gates was very enthusiastice about this, according to Amelio, as you might well imagine and was furious over the decision to go with Jobs and NeXT. However, had Amelio done this I don't think there would be an Apple today. The MacOS would have become nothing more than a shell on top of Windows such as HP's NewWave before it. And Mac users would have all the same problems that Windows users have. Who knows what it would have been like if BeOS has been purchased? On another note, if iWork is going to replace AppleWorks, the drawing and painting programs could just be embedded apps acccessible from within Pages and Keynote, similar to the way you have some minor editing tools in iPhoto today. As for a database, Apple already has one: FileMaker Pro. I could foresee an "iWork Standard" containing Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and an "iWork professional" that includes FileMaker along with the other apps. Therefore, the whole suite is really there once Numbers is introduced.
    United StatesR. Mansfield had this to say on Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 5
    Apple Preparing for a Microsoft Free Future?
  • I know I'm going to be odd-man out here, but I wish Microsoft had not discontinued IE or that they would begin to develop it again. I can't check my work email on Safari or Firefox because it runs on MS Exchange Server. And I still occasionally hit a site that won't work on anything but IE. But IE 5 for the Mac is going to be showing its age before too long and some sites are just going to be off limits for Mac users.
    United StatesR. Mansfield had this to say on Mar 17, 2005 Posts: 5
    What Does Internet Explorer 7 Mean For Apple?