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Two Roads Diverged (3/11/99)
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For those of you who feel that sorting out the muddled and conflicting rumors about Apple's upcoming consumer portable (code-named "P1" and expected to be marketed under the name "WebMate") no longer offers enough of a challenge, perhaps it's time to move on to even more inscrutable subjects of conjecture. How about the MacMate, Apple's supposed PDA that they promised us way back when they finally nailed the Newton's coffin shut? Heck, we don't even really know that it'll be called the MacMate, but that's what most rumors seem to indicate-- and unlike just about every other project ever worked on inside Apple's walls, nobody seems to know the code name of this PDA.
Anyway, what we don't know about the MacMate could fill Albert Hall and we'd still have enough left over to use as cheap packing material for the next million or so PowerBooks rolling off the lines. For a long time it was rumored that the MacMate would run some slimmed-down version of the Mac OS, referred to by most as "Mac OS Lite;" we're pretty sure that even Apple indicated it would be Mac OS-based way back when. But then there was that news that Steve Jobs tried to buy the Palm Pilot from 3Com, and since that failed, Apple and Palm seem to have gotten pretty buddy-buddy in the PR sense. Palm's released that cool Claris Organizer-based MacPac 2, and Apple's been pushing the Palm on its website for quite a while. That's led many to believe that the MacMate will simply be an Apple-cobranded Palm unit, perhaps with some nice Newton-salvaged extensions like true handwriting recognition. So which is it-- Palm OS, or Mac OS Lite?
According to O'Grady's PowerPage, not even Apple is quite sure of that yet. Reportedly, Apple's treading two paths to see which one gets them to a happier place. One road involves negotiating an OEM license from Palm, which would let them build and ship Palm OS-based MacMates. The other choice is to use Mac OS Lite, which seems really to exist and which may or may not be a "redesigned version of the Newton OS." Whichever they pick, we hope they choose well, choose soon, and ship a true Apple PDA before our beloved but crusty MessagePad 100 crumbles into rubberized dust.
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SceneLink (1397)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/11/99 episode: March 11, 1999: Steve Jobs knows a media opportunity when he sees one-- hence, the QuickTime-only release of the new Star Wars trailer. Meanwhile, a lot more iMacs were sold in January than we once surmised, and the fog swirling around the mysterious MacMate PDA is perhaps just starting to lift...
Other scenes from that episode: 1395: The Force Is With Us (3/11/99) Everyone knows Steve Jobs is a consummate showman; in fact, we have our own pet theory that involves the earthly remains of P. T. Barnum and an advanced cloning technique years ahead of what the general public believes to be currently possible... 1396: Of Cereal and Helium (3/11/99) We admit, we often worry far too much about issues that don't always directly affect us. Our concern over the relative performance of the iMac in the retail marketplace occasionally borders on the obsessive, despite the fact that whether the round translucent wonder is first or fortieth on the charts really shouldn't weigh very heavily on our minds...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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