Month: March 2025
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1985: Open Mac
The Future Future may well bring us an “Open Car.” The Past Future brought us an “Open Mac.” By mid-1985 it was clear that Apple’s 1984-introduced Macintosh was facing some sales and adoption challenges, and thus so was Apple itself. Founder Steve Jobs was forced out by the CEO he recruited, John Sculley. Jean-Louis Gassée…
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Open Car
We just bought our first EV. OK, so we’re not always the earliest of adopters (it does replace a hybrid we bought 15 years ago). Much of the EV Future is already somewhat evenly distributed, but there’s still a very long way to go (so to speak). Having a new piece of technology (and that’s…
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2001: WiFi by any other name (part 2)
“Almost immediately, ‘wireless Internet’ took off in homes, businesses and coffee shops, here in Ashland and around the world.” Continuing where we left off, Apple’s 1999 “AirPort” was a big step in distributing the WiFi Future, but it wasn’t quite “wireless Internet” yet. It was wireless, but it wasn’t Internet. Not-so-coincidentally, in 1999 the city…
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1999: WiFi by any other name (part 1)
Similar to the way we’ve almost come to take “Every movie ever made” for granted, we’ve come to take many of the technologies underlying this prophesy from 1999 for granted too. That same year, Apple again did its distribute-the-Future-much-more-widely thing with another now-taken-for-granted technology: WiFi. WiFi is so taken for granted now that we even…
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1999: Every movie ever made
A few years after the prophetic AT&T “You Will” ad campaign, a regional phone and Internet provider, Qwest, did AT&T one better. A guy walks into a shabby motel lobby: “What kind of rooms you got?”Bored motel clerk: “King size.”Guy: “You got room service?”Clerk: “Donuts and coffee.”Guy: “Got entertainment?”Clerk: “All rooms have every movie ever…
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