Apple Completed 15 'Strategic' Acquisitions in Fiscal 2013

[pubwvj]

Apple needs an entire department devoted to maintaining legacy support for old hardware and software so that users can use these older tools and access their data. Apple has the resources. Doing so will benefit Apple by bringing older users into the fold where they can buy, buy, buy new services.

Old hardware should be supported as possible.
New OSs should support old hardware with graceful fallback where possible.

New hardware should support all old software.
New hardware has the computational power to emulate all the old systems.
The cost of maintaining and emulation is nominal.

There are a a tremendous amount of resources in old software from the 1990's and beyond that is not being created today. Especially true in educational software, games, small business tools and all the data that goes with them.

Offering full legacy support would benefit Apple by making it so all the old software can run on all new MacOS/iOS hardware and much butter to boot. This would help bring users forward to buy the latest and greatest hardware.

 

[Justan00b]

Will it be necessary to restart in high speed traffic?

Hahahahahaha!!!! Wow, that's a knee slapper....!!!
I get it!!!! You mean- because.... like how you just CONSTANTLY have to force reboot Apple's iPhones & iPads (I mean, CONSTANTLY!!), right??
Wait.
You don't?
They're HIGHLY stable?
Oh......
Well then.... I don't get your comment in the slightest. =/

 

[gtelware]

I am waiting for the new products of the Apple.

 

[mrtravel123]

Seriously, does anyone even look at those user reports?

You know, the same thing happens to me with Google Maps. I've reported significant errors and they never got fixed. One time I actually did get a reply. But, the reply had NOTHING to do with what I commented about. It is as if I wrote about mathematics... and they replied back on the topic of peanut butter.

The new Maps program in Mavericks is nice. It isn't perfect, of course. I can certainly see that they spent TONS of time working on 3D imagery in Los Angeles, New York City, etc. They must have had hundreds of people working very tediously on every house, tree, building, hill, etc. Even individual trees have been "stretched" to give a more accurate 3D rendering. It isn't like Google's 3D. Google's 3D is basically fancy computer generated boxes, etc. The Mavericks version uses aerial photography.

 

[Tobias Funke]

Whaaat? No 'wireless' version?

I would be more worried about the hands free settings!!

 

[mdriftmeyer]

this year's acquisitions prove that Apple is running out of innovation

the only solution when you no longer have good ideas is to buy others'

Right. Apple's tripled its patent count in the past 2 years with this current year and you're talking about running out of ideas by these acquisitions that add even more patents and engineering talent?

 

[Phillip U.]

What about PrimeSense

There were rumors earlier this year about Apple looking into acquiring PrimeSense (the Kinect people). Did anything happen with that?

 

[i4m]

this year's acquisitions prove that Apple is running out of innovation

the only solution when you no longer have good ideas is to buy others'

Buying other companies IS a good idea, and using technologies others built in a new way IS innovative.

Don't how how well Apple will do either of those things, but it goes to show that you don't have to keep a narrow view.

 

[Swift]

Apple needs an entire department devoted to maintaining legacy support for old hardware and software so that users can use these older tools and access their data. Apple has the resources. Doing so will benefit Apple by bringing older users into the fold where they can buy, buy, buy new services.

Old hardware should be supported as possible.
New OSs should support old hardware with graceful fallback where possible.

New hardware should support all old software.
New hardware has the computational power to emulate all the old systems.
The cost of maintaining and emulation is nominal.

There are a a tremendous amount of resources in old software from the 1990's and beyond that is not being created today. Especially true in educational software, games, small business tools and all the data that goes with them.

Offering full legacy support would benefit Apple by making it so all the old software can run on all new MacOS/iOS hardware and much butter to boot. This would help bring users forward to buy the latest and greatest hardware.

I think the truth is halfway here. I don't think any modern operating system can maintain complete support for hardware much past five years, because the hardware is moving ahead so fast. Yes, you could use virtualization. But keeping the old while doing the new has a price. Unless you stop moving fast enough to keep up with the processors, etc., the older things get lost. Maybe a virtualization box you add on, that uses the processor when you want to run Mac Classic. I have documents going back to the early '80s on my Mac today. But the apps? Less useful. MacPaint in 1985 when I saw my first Mac was fantastic! Not so much now. There's been 30 years of computer engineering since then.

 

[drtyrell]

I'd add Adobe and Netflix to those buys. domination of two key markets.