What is Digg?70 Comments
- wisedude, on 10/12/2007, -5/+37Why would they wish they never published it? Obviously they wanted the then dying apple to be saved, or they wouldn'tve published, and look they're still here!!
- alcimedes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33Sheesh, egg all over their faces. What were those fools are Wired thinking......
"7. Don't disappear from the retail chains."
"13. Exploit every Wintel user's secret fear that some day they're going to be thrown into a black screen with a blinking C-prompt."
14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack.
15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners.
19. Get rid of the cables. Go wireless.
23. Create a new logo. The corporate graphic of the multicolored apple was tired in the 1980s, now it's positively obsolete.
34. Port the OS to the Intel platform, with its huge amount of investment in hardware, software, training, and experience.
Ok, so while going over that list I happen to see a pile of items that actually were adopted in the last 10 years.
Forcasting 10 years into the IT field is almost impossible, I find Wired's list impressive considering. - Lardquake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21The funny thing is, Apple actually did end up implementing a fair few of those... Of course, a great many others are hilariously stupid, in hindsight. Abandon the Mach kernel and run on Windows NT? Leave the hardware business? Keep the cloners happy?
- 10scott10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19my favorite is 61.
"61. Ink a promotion/development deal with Shaquille O'Neal; introduce designer Shaqintosh model." - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I don't see why WIRED would be ashamed of this article. A lot of it happened, almost exactly as predicted:
3 - Apple treats its developers much better now than it did in '97.
4 - As iCEO, Steve Jobs took a one dollary/year salary.
5 - They straightened out the naming convention. iMac / Mac Pro. Simple.
6 - Steve apologized for where Apple went wrong when he came in, and he admitted publicly when the G5 laptop and 3ghz PowerMac didn't show up, and they had to switch to Intel.
7 - Apple sure took this one to heart. Not just space in a computer store, now Apple Stores are consumer meccas.
10 - No one's going to argue that Apple has great marketing now.
12 - See 10.
13 - Done and done. Change "rewrite sys.ini files" to "fight viruses."
14 - Two words: Jonathan Ive.
15 - They dumped the Newton, eMate, the cameras, the scanners, all that.
18 - No more buttoned down corporate. "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC."
19 - Apple's all about the wireless now.
23 - They ditched the rainbow logo, now an Apple logo is cool again.
29 - Power management in OS X is far better than Windows now.
34 - MacOS on Intel. Done.
37 - Better than learning from NeXT, Apple is NeXT.
40 - Simplicity is certainly Apple's trademark now.
49 - They brought back the most original "Mac folk" of all, Stevie J.
50 - Steve Jobs certainly has all the authority he wants now.
52 - Steve even grew back the beard!
54 - Laser printer business, gone.
56 - No more missed deadlines.
62 - A computer that doesn't crash? Thank you, UNIX.
63 - Java works on OS X.
70 - Simplified product line, done.
83 - iLife is Mac only. So they did that.
87 - The Mac Mini is nice and cheap.
98 - There's your "Switch" campaign, exactly.
Most ironically wrong:
"64. Team up with Sony, which wants to get into the computer business in a big way - think Sony MacMan."
My favorite, and the most true prediction -
"101 Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really worry about." - jaschwan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Speaking of Sega.. .
81. Merge with Sega and become a game company. - chaosfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I agree, I think they'd be glad they wrote this. How many of these concepts did Apple take to heart? Wireless, NeXT's OpenStep, porting to Intel...
- drakino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I have that issue around here somewhere, next to the Wired that talked about "PUSH - the web revolution"
- Toast1185, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11I agree, why would they wish they never wrote this article? Just because apple is doing well now doesn't mean they always have them. I am sure there is a psychological term for this kind of temporal flub, but I will just go ahead and call it fanboyism
- cypherz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12So what? Now its here again. Why do some people think dupes are such a big deal?
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6102: Totally reinvent business model by becoming a content provider. Make immense revenue by selling portable music players that are so common place that people throw its name around like they do "Kleenex", "Coke", "Xerox"
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction sometimes. - brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8@evilspoons
Apple DID allow companies to build clone computers and it very nearly bankrupted them. - streetstealth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept."
Wow. If only they had known how far Apple would eventually take this one! - streetstealth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5...Or this one!
"14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. The original Macs stood out because of their innovative look. Repeat that. " - Mirag3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Im sorry, i just have to bring this to everyone's attention:
"93. Develop a way to program that requires no scripting or coding." - JoshuaGross, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Heh, some of it makes me think Apple followed some of their ideas...
31. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something: a) cellular email b) 56-channel TV c) Internet phone. - brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5P.S. Allowing clone manufacturers sure helped IBM's desktop market share didn't it?
- brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6The funny thing is, a lot of those items were truly bad advice too.
- wukash, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Throw enough crap onto the wall and something is bound to stick.
- dustyshadow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"17. Build some decent applications that the business community will care about."
They still need to work on that one... - cuddleparty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3those clones were crap! i remember when my hs journalism dept. got a bunch of new radius towers and we thought were were so damn sweet. i wish i could get back all the time i spent rebooting. on a brighter note, i love os x dearly. and in all fairness i have both a mac and a pc. the pc is for gaming, the mac was for design and is now for when the pc gets all borked and i have to google a solution.
- Xoligy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes and it's Digg.com's growth, there are not multiple Digg.coms. You fool.
- techsquad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And for the record, what is IBM's market share for the personal computer? Isn't Dell the leader in the Windows Compatible market now?
- mmdigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2#7 sounds like the root of a good move - Apple stores. This doesn't mention Apple stores specifically but the suggestion comes awfully close.
- gabogab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2the fact that it appears may be more a function of digg.com's growth than the bad memory of its users. If you are new to the site, you are bound to add (and digg) a story that has been in the front page in the past.
- weberik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The best suggestion by far: Bring back Steve Jobs.
Had they not brought back Steve, this discussion would be moot, because Apple would have been absorbed by another company or otherwise faded away. Apple in 1997 truly was in bad shape. Sticking with the Mac platform at that time was an act of faith, which tells you a lot about the power of the Apple brand. Another two or three years under Amelio would have sealed Apple's casket.
Now the real question is: How well is Apple preparing for the time when Jobs is no longer running the show? This likely won't be an issue for some time to come, but the danger of a charismatic genius CEO is that when he leaves, the air can go right out of the balloon. - Katarn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This article is absolutely hilarious and brilliant to look back almost a decade later. So many ideas that were totally right and some jaw-droppingly awful.
My favorite:
"82. Give the first Apple made exclusively for Windows a cheeky name (like The Big Apple) and an irresistible industrial design like the 20th-anniversary Macintosh. Introduce it with a mammoth ad campaign that shows the makers of other Windows PCs running for cover, as if they've been fearing Apple's monstrous entry into their market for decades."
They've got the Bootcamp soldiers; they must be hiding the artillery. - Drewboy64, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Most of them are bad ideas...
- nybe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4that is genius, I hope Apple applies some of those suggestions.
- bayonetblaha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Xoligy:
That's hilarious! I was looking all over for the incorrect apostrophe I missed, till I realized he must have been referring to gabogab's. Oh the hipocrisy. - cctoronto05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All in all, you gotta say there are some prescient ideas here. In fact, talking about them is one thing, making them happen a la Steve Jobs is quite something else.
And the past 10 years has definitely been.. quite something. - noeljohnhoward, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4hahah proving the story about how fikle digg users memory is.....
- noreturn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1^^ Exactly. I estimate roughly 7% of their suggestions had merit, and a third of those that did have merit would not have worked in 1997. 7% is abysmal.
- evilspoons, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I still think that Apple's market share in the desktop computer market would be massive compared to what it is today if they allowed clone companies to build systems - especially with OS X.
- pyrates, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@brstilson
Apple had a chance with gateway for them to sell mac clones, but they wanted to charge more then gateway wanted to pay to license the OS, so they just stopped talking to gateway instead of trying to negotiate. This also turned away most of the major PC manufacturers at the time and so only was able to get some small time PC manufacturers to make the apple clones. That is what hurt them. Then the small time PC manufacturers realized that the big margins were in the high end market and started producing mac clones that competed against apple directly and apple didn't like that. It just wasn't cost effective for them to license the mac OS anymore. Which is a shame. I bet though if they got a big name PC manufacturer on it though, they could have been profitable. Plus they didn't want the business market like Microsoft wanted. That also cost them market share I think. - ravenpen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+150. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development.
This one seemed to work quite well. - brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@pyrates:
If I were running Apple and the clone issue was brought up, I would only point to the fact that IBM did the same thing in the early 80's and it destroyed their market share. People think Apple is like Microsoft and it's not, the two companies couldn't be more different. They're not even in the same business. Apple makes its profit from sale of its hardware. Their cash cows are Macintosh and iPod, not OS X. Liscensing OS X would mean saying goodbye to all those Macintosh/MacBook sales, compatibility/support problems, and instability.
Microsoft on the other hand makes the majority of its profit from computer manufacturers installing Windows. In addition to providing a source of revenue, OEMs are also a target of blame. If something goes wrong, it's their fault.
Apple is not going to compete with Microsoft in a direct open market because they know they would lose. People have the "I need Microsoft" mantra branded on their cerebral cortex. That is their business philosophy: don't attract customers by making a better product, attract customers by making them think they need you. It works extremely well. - gabogab, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Even though there are some pretty bad advise in there, I was surprised about how many of the suggestions they made were taken by Apple (whether Apple was reading or not), which means that it was not an entirely bad article. Among the suggestions that Apple heeded:
4. Gil Amelio should steal a page from Lee Iacocca's page and work for free for one year (actually, it was Steve Jobs who did it)
5. Straighten out the naming convention.
14. Do some creative box design and separate yourself from the pack.
15. Dump or outsource the Newton, eMate, Cameras and Scanners
17. Build some decent applications that the business community will care about.
23. Create a new logo.
28. Don't loose your sense of humor. (the new add campaign proves it)
34. Port the OS to Intel
I didn't go through the whole thing, but it is clear that there are lots of good ones there. - ColtraneOfMars, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Some of the suggestions were good while others were silly. I remember this issue. I kept the cover which had the Apple logo surrounded by thorns with the headline "Pray." I thought they were wrong even though the company wasn't doing that well.
I also have the Wired covers for when they predicted "The Long Boom" and the first human clone (supposedly born in 1999). It helps me remember one of the reasons why I don't read Wired. - tyroga, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Hey you have to admit, dupe or not I hadn't seen it before (except maybe back in 1997). And it seems that Apple IS doing a lot of what is on the list, well the stuff that makes sense anyway, gotta so though number 16 about "Take better care of your customers" still needs some work.
- petepete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0and 37. Thats what saved their bacon (ok - with a little help from the iPod)
- Thyzisen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Hey they did do 34.
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1We never got the tower with leopard spots, but we did get 10.5 Leopard as an OS. It had spots on the install disc...
- SpazticChips, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1lol, looks like apple used the article as a to do list of sorts :)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1102. Make the ipod.
- djrtitan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1#102 - Design an attractive, simple-to-use MP3 player that will control 80% of the MP3 market.
#103 - Allow Windows to run on Mac computers. - DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Please digg brstilson up!
Sorry I dugg you down by mistake, my finger didn't catch your sarcasm :( - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3This is boring, tired *****. That's why people are complaining about the dupes.
GET OVER IT.
And by the way, an apostrophe and then S makes something POSSESSIVE, not plural. - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The only one I disagree with you on is #17. I don't think Apple has really tried to go into the business market yet, nor do I think they will.
"Build some apps the business community will care about" - like what? iWork? Pages and Keynote are cool and all, but I certainly don't know any company that's used them to replace Word or PowerPoint. There's no database, no spreadsheet, no groupware, no Visio, none of that.
Not that they should do any of that. I'm just saying that they haven't. -
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