dick applebaum

boltsfan17 said:

gmgravytrain said:

Although Tim Cook seems to be doing OK, I just think Apple is leaving a lot on the table on the computer side. Why not at least maximize revenue with something Apple used to be good at and that's making decent computers? I could understand if no consumers are buying desktop and laptop computers, but other computer companies seem to be doing well selling them.

So the computers Apple makes now are shit?

I don't think that Macs are being neglected -- rather they are evolving.  Likely, we will have a need for trucks for for the immediate future.  But today's trucks have big, powerful, enviromnentally-unfriendy gas-guzzling engines -- take up too much road space, require specialized expert drivers, mechanics, repairmen, etc..

Who says we need massive semi trucks with large, expensive Intel or AMD engines?   What we could do the same job with a few enviromnentally-friendy smaller trucks with Apple engines?

No reason they couldn't be Mac trucks (or PeterBuilt, for that matter) and carry the same load at less cost and effect the ecosystem.

I suspect, that within the next year, we'll see  Macs with ARM CPUs running macOS and the apps required by most consumers...  That will be the open gambit that will eventually replace  those big trucks.

I guess you could say that Steve was just joshing us when he defined the car vs truck differences.

entropys said:

volcan said:

seanismorris said:
Storing everything online (which it seems like Apple wants) doesn’t work outside of documents & email.

You can store any sort of file on iCloud.

What if, for any reason that may be important to a person, they don’t want to?

Apple has the tech to provide a local cloud... tho that may seem like an oxymoron.

Consider, iCloud/iCloud drive, likely, uses Apple's FoundationDB on their own servers and on AWS, Google and MS servers. FoundationDB offers performance, reliability, distributed scalability -- the database exists in clusters which can be distributed over machines/data centers all over the world... that's the remote cloud part.

However, you can scale FoundationDB down so that it can run in a cluster on a single machine -- actually a single core of a single machine... maybe a Mac mini -- or maybe an A11 class ARM processor in a box the size of an AppleTV (or a more stylish container like a HomePod).

I made this post to the FoundationDB web site a few days ago -- it illustrates running a local cloud:


The beauty of all this is flexibility -- as your needs change you can scale/distribute your database up or down -- in any combination of local or remote clouds.

Great article -- well said!

king editor the grate said:

That top photo is like a Cook Will Kill You and Everything You Hold Dear look. It kind of reminds me of the some of the grimaces I see men doing in 50th anniversary photos; the women in those are generally beaming cuz they know they've won.

That's the look that your mom gave you when you were misbehaving -- it stopped you in your tracks, nothing was said or needed to be said.   Something like this:



The look is called the Whammy:

Evil-Eye Fleegle, an otherwise petty zoot-suited hood, apparently standing only four and a half feet tall and living in Brooklyn NY,  has one unique ability which was taught to him by his mother.

When he concentrates a destructive beam shots from one of his eyeballs. 

Called by him a “Whammy” it has three settings:

A single whammy can knock a dozen men unconscious for a day, a double whammy can make the stone head of Teddy Roosevelt on mount Rushmore weep, and the triple whammy can melt a battle ship.

Anything more powerful than a single whammy however tires out Fleegle for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week in the case of a triple. 

The dreaded quadruple whammy, which only Fleegle’s mother can perform, is said to be to horrible to contemplate.     

jffdx said:

"Formed in 1998" is way off. FileMaker goes back at least to 1990. 

Goes back to the mid 1980s when Claris acquired the NutShell db and renamed it  FileMaker...  I can remember demoing NutShell to the John Deere IT mgr on a 1985 Mac.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileMaker