Forums | MacLife

Has anyone else ever gone back to the oldest pages of the Circuit Board? It is really funny, strange, and sometimes scary. People make predictions about the future, their hopes and fears. After browsing the old pages, here are some funny things I found:

January 21, 2003:

Tickle-Me-Eric wrote:

Within Five years Apple will be that digital media player company that also makes computers

How true it is becoming. I agree, by 2008 this will happen.

January 8, 2003:

Gary Peterson wrote:

Who wants an iPhone? Unless it's something dramatically new (ie expensive), the market's saturated with mobiles at the moment, and demand is dropping.

I'd see it as a pointless product, unrelated to the Mac, and something Apple should steer clear of. The last thing they need is to diversify into non-core products, sapping R&D budget from the professional and consumer Macs.

January 31, 2003:

atariv8 wrote:

Any chance of Apple developing a Tablet PC for mac? I love the tablet PCs but hate the operating system!

4 years, and we are still waiting!

Feb 20, 2003:

y2kapostle wrote:

Honestly, I hope the iPod just gets more feature-rich as far as what it is intended to be now (primarily audio). Video iPod, maybe. But why?

What I'd like to see is firewire startup disk use and not burn the display. Or firewire 800 in about a year when that is "more standard." Perhaps make the analog an in/out port, and make a software recorder.

I think Apple shoud make the iPod with more/better audio features, and continue to make it wonderful, like it is. My 5 GB model serves me perfectly.

March 2003:

Carbon96 wrote:

Apple wins kudos for new music service

In a March '03 Post about Intel:

Spoofi wrote:

Did you guys ever stop to thing that somehow this might involve apple??  Apple is not exactly bound with chains to motorola you know, I'd say there's not even a sense of loyalty towards motorola anymore.

Immediately, Spoofi was bashed as a troll, with replies like:

oh!  ha ha.

and

go find an intel forum.

In the end, he was completely right. He later said that the future of the G4 doesn't satisfy Apple's needs.

fanothaft wrote:

30 in. SCREEN!!!!
Hear that rumor?? Got it at www.macwhispers.com. Any comments?

and lastly, an optimistic view from the past:

June 24, 2003:

Apple's future is so ridiculously bright, I need to have permanent sunglasses surgically implanted into my eyes.  iTunes Music Store (coming soon for Windows), new iPods, OS X 10.3 (I don't like saying "Panther" it doesn't roll off the tongue), Power Mac G5, awesome PowerBooks and iBooks all around, eMac and iMacs always doing well...there's nothing bad at all with Apple currently, as far as I'm concerned.