IBM - page 4

In Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial, it wasn’t a stretch to realize that the big brother figure was meant to represent IBM. That makes it very ironic that IBM now has more Macs, iPads, and iPhones deployed than any company except Apple.

The extent to which Apple devices are being used at IBM became clear during a presentation at MacWorld|iWorld last week by Chris Peppin that detailed the initiatives of Big Blue related to Apple. Those initiatives are pretty shocking considering the fact that IBM was once Apple’s number one adversary in the business technology market.

Although I’ve always been delighted with my Apple USB Keyboard, but some people live and die by the clickety-clack. For some QWERTY warriors, in fact, things never got better than the vintage old IBM Model M, a platonic ideal of a mechanical keyboard.

DAS has been trying to appeal to the vintage old IBM Model M crowd for a couple years now with their fantastic series of DAS Keyboards, but those beautiful accessories — while admittedly both beautiful and satisfying to type on — weren’t strictly Mac compatible.

Now that’s all changed. Meet the DAS Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac, and it not only will help old Model M-ers make the switch… it should even please vintage Mac users who have been missing their old Apple Extended Keyboard II.

This rare photograph of Steve Jobs demonstrates the Apple co-founder’s infamous rebellious spirit as he “flips the bird” outside an IBM building in New York City. It was taken in 1983 when the Macintosh team visited the city for a meeting with Newsweek, and was posted to Google+ today by Andy Hertzfield, a member of the original Macintosh development team.

While there are countless little-known videos on YouTube that are well worth a watch for any Apple fan, this Ghostbusters parody has to be one of the best. The clip was filmed for an International Sales Meeting held in 1984 and it sees a team called the “Blue Busters” free the world from IBM PCs and replace them with the Macintosh.

Although it is widely believed that Apple refuses to license its patents to competing companies, it turns out that’s a huge misconception. In fact, the company licenses a patent covering iOS touch-based scrolling to the likes of IBM and Nokia, and it offered the same deal to rival Samsung, who wasn’t at all interested. If it had taken Apple up on the offer, however, it could have spared the Korean company a whole load of trouble in court.

1,000 workers at a Jingmo Electronics factory in Shenzhen, China, staged a strike earlier this week over long hours and poor working conditions. The factory supplies keyboards to companies like IBM, LG, and Apple, and China Labor Watch is now calling for these companies to improve the working conditions for the employees at the factory, focusing specifically on Apple.

The engineer who helped created the first IBM PC 30 years ago Friday, marked the upcoming anniversary by announcing his “primary computer is a tablet.” Mark Dean, now IBM’s Chief Technology Officer for the Middle East and Africa, writes PCs are going the way of the vacuum tube and typewriter.

To celebrate IBM’s centenary next week, the world’s leading financial magazine, The Economist, took a look at what high-tech companies might survive 100 years.

Apple made the cut, but Microsoft didn’t. And Google is looking sketchy. Why?