A Fruity Birthday for the Geeks

The Web is awash with birthday wishes for my favourite computing fruit, the Apple. Everyone has there little say on the company that started personal computing, lost the battle, and then resurrected itself from 90s when they were supposed to just die like so many other non-Windows PC makers did (how I loved my Amiga!)

Wanna be a true Macolyte? Apparently you have to celebrate with a tattoo! (some true, some Photoshoped). I'll settle for a bumper-sticker me thinks.

C|NET has a nice summary of Apple trials and tribulations, and Wired has a great screenshot gallery of all the previous Apple OSs.

Another nice read here, of which I particularly liked the notes on the Apple Retail stores success in the face of almost unanimous condemnation that it would fail. This highlights a long held view I have of "what is an expert really worth"? They all said Apple's retail stores would flop, because it had for Gateway, Dell etc.

Thats the thing about "experts" (and here I am primarily referring to stock pundits, who examine companies and make recommendations on stock value based on what _they_ think the company is doing) - they can only base their opinions on what has happened in the past, not on how a new approach may work. This approach just cannot work all the time. The sad part is, companies stock prices go up and down based on such "expertise", which affects real people's job security. That is an amazing amount of power when a few dozen opinions can affect thousands of real people's livelihood. The stock market is not a system that resists rumour.

And here's a quote my current company needs to take to heart:

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important. -- Steve Jobs to Business Week, Oct. 12, 2004

Anyhow, here's to many more years of superior fruit products.