Re: Need help for Engineering Management project

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney-99@hot-mail-com>]

> An Ibode would entail lots and lots of little devices and a big
> primary controller.  Clearly not their style.

I worked with Apple on their failed Newton product.  A tragedy on a whole
number of levels.  But there was one fundamental problem, people without
'lives' were attempting to write lifestyle devices.  That's like asking deaf
people to make musical instruments.  No insult intended based on hearing
impairment, of course.  So going the next step and asking them to create a
system that integrates with the home is perhaps likewise unrealistic.
Mainly because they NEVER GO HOME, or certainly don't have a life that
doesn't intimately involve access to computers.

Then there's the whole misplaced hero-worship thing expecting the company to
be interested in playing along with the game.  The policy is almost exactly
the opposite, for if they picked up on someone else's ideas, even freely
suggested, it'd present an intellectual property nightmare.

> Good luck, Clay and sorry for the rough introduction!

More like wake up and smell the realities beyond a college project.  Don't
get me wrong, enthusiasm is a wonderful thing.  But the combination of
naivete, misunderstandings of usenet/google, help with homework, etc, have
been seen countless times before.  So yeah, there's certainly some 'grumpy
old men' sentiment but it's based on actual experience.  Learn from it.

-Bill Kearney