Al Gore joins Apple's board of directors

[Caesar the Great]

......and I thought Mac's couldn't get any worse

[Ned]

It is interesting that Apple would put a cheat on its board.

[Wraith]

--"All new Macs come with a special program that re-does every computation several times no matter how important the decision may be."

You forgot that he'd have to point out that they're called algorithms...

Wraith
Thank you for not being perky

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Wraith
You forgot that he'd have to point out that they're called algorithms...

Nice catch.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

First I read that Apple will chuck motorola for Intel CPUs

Really? I sure hope so...

There was speculation they'd jump ship to AMD, but that's not valid anymore.

99% confidence that the G5 will be the IBM PowerPC 970. 64-bit, supports AltiVec, completely backwards compatible with the G3 and G4 PowerPC stuff. It's essentially a cutdown version of IBM's Power4 CPU with Altivec added.

Why else would they add an Altivec unit unless Apple was going to use it?

[Ted Striker]

Al certainly likes to join a losing team for some reason...

[MRT144]

SELL SELL SELL!

[Sikander]

Re: Al Gore joins Apple's board of directors

And in a related note in Hell, Ambrose Burnside has just signed up to be Musilini's Chief of Staff.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Not to inject a note of sobriety into the hijinks here, but this actually seems like a fine choice. Remember that Board members don't really do anything except provide oversight. All sorts of retired (or temporarily retired) politicians get appointed to boards, largely for their political clout and for the ability to hold them up to shareholdsers and say , "Ooo, look who we got." But here's a case where Apple did that with a guy who knows something about technology (the Internet crack aside, Gore really does know his stuff on computers, networking and public policy). I'm not particularly attached to either Apple or Gore, but this makes sense.

Now, if Oracle really does go ahead and appoint Bill Clinton to their Board...

[MarkG]

Apple was criticized in a BusinessWeek article last year as having one of the nation's worst boards, in part because at the time Jobs was on Gap's board and its CEO was also on Apple's board. Jobs has since stepped down from the retailer's board. Millard Drexler, who had been Gap's CEO, remains on Apple's board but is now CEO of retailer J. Crew.

if someone understood this, let me know

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by MarkG

Apple was criticized in a BusinessWeek article last year as having one of the nation's worst boards, in part because at the time Jobs was on Gap's board and its CEO was also on Apple's board. Jobs has since stepped down from the retailer's board. Millard Drexler, who had been Gap's CEO, remains on Apple's board but is now CEO of retailer J. Crew.

if someone understood this, let me know

It's a conflict-of-interest thing, I suspect. Board members are supposed to provide oversight of the corporation on behalf of shareholders. But if the chairman of corporation A is on the board of corporation B, and the chairman of corporation B is on the board of corporation A, then they each have an incentive to not scutinize the other's corporation too closely. That's what was feared here: Drexler wouldn't raise a stink on the board of Jobs' company, because Jobs was on the board of Drexler's company and could do the same thing.

[rah]

Originally posted by Wraith
You forgot that he'd have to point out that they're called algorithms...

I must be getting old/slow. It took a few minutes to get this one. Even with the post after it

RAH

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

There was speculation they'd jump ship to AMD, but that's not valid anymore.

99% confidence that the G5 will be the IBM PowerPC 970. 64-bit, supports AltiVec, completely backwards compatible with the G3 and G4 PowerPC stuff. It's essentially a cutdown version of IBM's Power4 CPU with Altivec added.

Why else would they add an Altivec unit unless Apple was going to use it?

That's what I heard.

It's not like Gore is going to be a major player.

Anyway Apple are doing alright - I set up one of those new imacs for someone the other day: it's a really nice machine and I'm sure more of them will appear (everyone in that department wants one now). They have a loyal customer base and their prices are coming down. They are never going to be the dominant player in computing since they only compete in a few niche markets. It's not as if most computer makers are having a good time of it right now anyway.

And oddly enough, it is Apple that isn't playing nice with MS now instead of the other way around. Wonders will never cease.

[St Leo]

Go, Gore, go. I wish he'd run in 2004, though.

[Richelieu]

Al Gore won the last election but is not the president.
Apple makes the best computers but doesn't have the market shares to show for it.
It's a match made in heaven.