Apple’s stock has taken a dive recently. There’s been no bad news from the company. To the contrary, according to their most recent financial reports, they’re one of the best-performing corporations on the planet. What’s driving the dive are rumosr and fear.
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The year isn’t even a quarter over yet and already it looks like I missed a big, big prediction.
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When I was young, I wanted computers just like the ones in Batman’s bat cave. Or like the computers on Lost In Space. Turns out, they were the same computers.
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This is the second part of an original, two-part story I wrote back in 1985 or so.
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This is an article I published in a San Diego computer magazine back in 1985. It’s copied here in its entirety.
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My last two blog posts have been about computer keyboards, and their typewriter ancestors. A question came up about the Dvorak keyboard. So this blog post I (finally) end my Keyboard tirades with a discussion of that keyboard.
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Allow me to continue my keyboard rant from Monday: Not only is the ancient keyboard layout part of our 21st Century life, but a lot of the old typewriter jargon remains as well.
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I look at my state-of-the-art cell phone and I’ve got to shake my head: The teensy keyboard that appears on the screen is essentially the same keyboard invented in 1874. Is this modern technology or not?
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I can picture the meeting now: Microsoft executives were pounding on the table, trying to compete with Google’s primary business, web search. Engineers demonstrated algorithms and explained flow charts, but the suits were displeased. They wanted results now. Better searching techniques didn’t matter, what was important was knocking Google off its perch.

So Microsoft cheated.
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There is no such thing as olive dictation. I meant to write, “I love dictation.” Computer dictation is a handy tool, but it’s often embarrassingly inaccurate. Often hysterically inaccurate.
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