CNET has coverage of Steve Jobs conference call with Jobs trying to do some serious damage control after Apple’s disastrous earnings report.
The funniest part is Jobs saying that Motorola is going to have a 700mhz G4 chip, as CNET puts it, “toward the first part of 2001.” Given Motorola’s track record that means Q4 2001 if at all.
On the other hand, given the gargantuan task that faces a company in today’s market that tries to control both the hardware and OS ends of a major computer platform, it’s a wonder they manage to stay in business at all. The best thing Apple could do is take a cue from the proposed death antitrust penalty against Microsoft — split the company into two separate entities along hardware and software lines (converting Apple shares into shares in both companies), and let her rip.
My suspicion is the hardware company would fail pretty quickly while the software company would take off. The hardware end of things is just killing Apple and they need to find an alternative or it’s going to end up killing the OS end as well.