News from Apple
Lots of Apple news in the last week or two, as you may have heard.
First of all, Apple announced its seventh consecutive profitable quarter. Hopefully within a quarter or two Apple will be on sound enough footing that it won't need to report how many consecutive profitable quarters it's had. This is pretty exciting news considering that the company seemed on the brink of death (or at least being bought by Sun or someone) only four or five years ago.
This was also good news for me personally, since it turns out that Apple has a profit-sharing plan which kicked in as a result of the profits, and the growth over last year. More money! Woo-hoo!
Perhaps even more exciting were announcements from MacWorld New York 99. As you may have heard, Apple announced its long-awaited "consumer portable", meaning low-cost notebook computer, called the iBook. It's been amazing watching the media circling in wait for this product; I read numerous articles prior to MacWorld anticipating it, but none of the articles actually had anything concrete to say. Apple has obviously been doing a great job keeping its key developments secret, as it did with the iMac last year, and with the multi-color iMacs earlier this year. (Has it only been seven months since those came out? Seems like much longer!)
Along with the iBook is a new wireless technology which is integrated into the product. Plus, apparently third-party software development for the Mac is cruising right along. All of this is announced in Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote address, which I highly recommend you check out, at least for the first five minutes or so. (What? Don't have QuickTime? Don't worry, you can download it even for one of those non-Mac computers.)
Yes, working for Apple is exciting! Even if I'm not working on one of the truly high-visibility consumer products.
But, I think I did much better this time around than the first time. I think I focused and prepared a little more. With experience, I should get better, I hope!
On the plus side, I did work out four times this week. I'm starting to feel like there's another belt-tightening in my near future, and then - it'll be time to buy a new belt! And maybe some new shorts, too! Woo-hoo!
About a week ago I finished listening to the CD set of The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence Ritter, during my cardiovascular workouts. In the 1960s, Ritter interviewed about a score of men who played Major League Baseball in the first two decades of the century, a period often overlooked in baseball history today. He published a book on it, and now the original interviews have been released. They're pretty entertaining, and quite informative, not only of the 1900s and 1910s, but of the 1960s, and the outlook of these men towards the players of that era. Worth a look if you're a baseball fan.
Since then I've been reading during the cardio workouts. I read all of Richard Feynman's What do You Care What Other People Think, a follow-up to his outstanding Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!. The later book is not as good - shorter, and the best essays are in the earlier book - but it does have an illuminating piece (which takes about half the book) on the commission investigating the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, which Feynman participated in.
Now I'm reading Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which is at least as dense as The Name of the Rose. I've talked to a few people who didn't make it through it; we'll see how I do.
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