pds@tove.UUCP (Dave Stotts) (10/03/85)
How about a bit of healthy and creative speculation... What are the feelings about the (perhaps) impending new "Steve Jobs" company, now that he has left Apple (or whatever one chooses to call his exit)? Is the firm likely to be a good investment, when and if it goes public? Or will expectations be so high that the initial stock prices will be overrated? Or will the company have to spend all its earnings for the first 50 years paying off the Apple lawsuits? Here is an initial comment to get things rolling: Several news reports have Jobs saying that he wants to work on a product (shall we say, workstation) for the academic environment. Will the market not be much more limited and narrow than that of the general-purpose home and business machines Apple has produced in the past? I would think so, and hence the earnings potential would seem to be less for such a company. They already have stiff competition from the likes of Sun, Apollo, etc. Dave Stotts Univ. of Maryland Computer Science pds@maryland
ekwok@cadsys.UUCP (Kwok Ed) (10/08/85)
My gut feelings tells me that it probably will be a flop. Examples of one-good-turn-does-not-deserve-another are Encore computer, Gavilan, Trilogy, although successes such as Amdahl, Cray Research are there. Empirical evidence aside, reading about it in the paper, it seems that the idea that Jobs has is this: start a new company, the product can come later. That idea and similar ones do not in practice work (I've never started a company, so don't quote me). So my crystal ball says, if you are invited to chip in, do it for the friendship (possible) not for the pocket book. -- So there ... Disclaimer : Why do a need a disclaimer? All opinions above are mine and nobody else's. So if you would please step outside ... Edward C. Kwok Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA 95051. (408)-987-8080