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Apple, Pixar And Disney To Merge?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Jul 10, 2000 07:56 AM
from the sources-less-reliable-than-slashdot- dept.
Master Bait sent in the freakiest merger rumor: Apple + Pixar + Disney, with Steve Jobs as the chairman... you can read more at the ever untrustworthy Drudge Report, so take this whole thing with a grain of salt the size of a Ford Taurus.
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  • by grahamsz (150076) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:17AM (#946216) Homepage Journal
    Cupertino 06/10/00 - Apple today announced that they will be merging with Disney in order to obtain disney's mouse technology. Having proven their success with 'Mickey' for over nearly 80 years, Apple are keen to revamp disney's mouse in a variety of different translucent colours in a bid to entice consumers to think differently.
  • by / (33804) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:19AM (#946238)
    Indeed. There seems to be some simple harmonic motion in the cycle between this rumor and the rumor that Apple is about to go out of business -- the longer it's been since one rumor was published, the more likely it is for the other to pop up.
  • ... calls the Drudge Report untrustworthy?

    Now that's the pot calling the kettle black!

  • by option8 (16509) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:35AM (#946291) Homepage
    or should i say slashdot, slashdot, slashdot...

    this little 'rumor' has been floating around for a long, long time - well, since 1997 or so. the speculation was there from the moment jobs stepped back into cupertino. that the G3/apple logo on the side of the blue G3s sported a distinctly mickey mouse-shaped hole didn't help things a bit.

    this is - for those of you that are not familiar with, or do not read on a fairly regular basis, or are not (as i am) addicted to, the mac rumor web scene - pre-macworld-news-vacuum-speculation

    disney doesn't want apple - apple is a hardware company with all kinds of actual inventory and an actual market to deal with, and not an entertainment company. if apple made action figures, maybe. also, apple doesn't want to be disney-fied. hell, they just got NeXT-ified, and things are still settling down from that. and besides, jobs would never stand for it.

    that doesn't preclude disney from throwing a lot of money at apple to produce special disney editions of the imac and ibook - which is more likely - featuring various characters from disney films, or at the very least a nice kid-oriented game/software bundle.

  • Now we can see apples in more movies. Why are all computers in movies apples?

    Remember how everybody says the Macintosh has a niche market, and other than that they've got really low market share? Well, guess what that niche market is? That's right - graphics, music, sound, video, film, etc. etc. The people who make movies use Macs.

    Of course, it doesn't hurt that Apple often gives computers to movie studios for use in movies. And sometimes they do cobranded marketing, like for Mission: Impossible.

    Remember when Forrest Gump bought stock in a fruit company? Apple didn't call the movie studio and ask them to use their logo. The movie studio called Apple and asked for permission.

    Something you might find interesting: Apple Masters [apple.com].

    --

  • by Kagato (116051) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:40AM (#946297) Homepage
    Jobs would have to be CEO over Eisners very dead body. (Which of course would be cryo-froze and put up in the castle along side Walt).

  • Why the hell would Disney want Apple?

    <RANT>Why the hell would Disney want the Anaheim Angels or the Anaheim Mighty Ducks? It's not just that the Angels, with all their talent, miss the playoffs year after year. IMHO a company like Disney has no business whatever owning a baseball, hockey, or any other sports team. I can see them owning ABC as a guaranteed market for its content. But ESPN is a considerable stretch. And baseball and hockey teams, for cryin' out loud? It's not like they're Ted Turner and they need them to fill air time on ABC.

    So Disney taking over Apple makes as much sense as a number of other acquisitions they've spent money on in the last several years while Disneyland falls apart [aol.com], which is to say none at all. </RANT>

    Actually, though, the main reason I don't believe this merger rumor is that I can't see Michael Eisner giving up control of Disney under any circumstances that don't involve carting him out of his office feet first.
    --
  • Let's think about this for a second.
    This cyclical rumor keeps showing up despite the fact there is no factual basis for it. The only reason for assuming it in the first place is the hideously tenuous logical link that Steve Jobs, who is the [technically unpaid-- he gets a salary of $1 a year, plus some other slight "perks". The "perks" though, have included such things as millions of dollars of stock, and an airplane.] CEO of Apple, is also CEO of Pixar. That's it. The same person is working at both companies in a management position, and one of those two companies uses a third company for distribution and promotion purposes, so somehow in the warped minds of macosrumors it would follow that the three would merge.

    Let's extend this logic a bit. For the next three or four minutes, for the purpose of argument, we will say that I AM A MAC RUMORS SITE, and therefore EVERYTHING I SAY IS TRUE because i NEVER CHECK MY SOURCES FOR ANY DEGREE OF ACCURACY.
    Bruce Perens [technocrat.net] is an employee of Pixar. Bruce Perens [technocrat.net] is also the lead person behind the Debian open source linux distribution and head of the FSF. Whether the last two sentances are true or not is irrelivant; all i know is, like, Bruce Perens name was listed in the credits when i saw Toy Story 2, and, um, like, this r337 IRC d00d in #ircle said once that Bruce Perens ran Debian, and i'm a mac rumors site PH33R M3!!! So it must be right.

    Because the same person is working at both Debian and Pixar in a coding postion, clearly the two are about to merge. This would clearly be logical, because they both involve penguins in some way, and because Debian has a [as of yet prerelease] PPC distribution in the works. So when disney buys apple, which they obviously will, Bruce Perens will make sure they buy the FSF as well because he's so attatched to it! Right? ISN"T THAT COOL!!!)@#(*!)(*!!!!!FSADFA

    Please, please explain to me why the above is a lesser degree of bullshit than the rumors of apple, disney and pixar merging?
    You can't, can you? The apple/disney rumors ARE just as idiotic. SO WHY DO YOU KEEP POSTING THIS STUFF ON THE SLASHDOT MAIN PAGE???
  • by scrutty (24640) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:03AM (#946369) Homepage
    Doubtless fuelled by the Jobs/Pixar Pixar Disney connection and the fact that the Pixar movies , well at least the toy stories represent some of Disneys biggest money spinners of recent years.

    For example http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/9902/disney-t o-buy-apple.shtml [appleinsider.com]

    Just feed Apple Disney merger into any search engine for many previous similar speculations, all equally uninformed ever since Jos took over the helm back at Apple.

    I seem to recall slashdot fetaturing it before as well ... here [slashdot.org] it is

  • by Darchmare (5387) on Monday July 10 2000, @04:17AM (#946385) Homepage
    Depends. The merger can't complete unless you can get Mickey to wear blue jeans and a black turtleneck sweater.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • by Wyatt Earp (1029) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:07AM (#946393)
    From macnn.com this morning...

    "Reigniting old rumors which have surfaced several times in the past few years, the latest edition of The Drudge Report speculates on an impending merger announcement between Pixar, Apple, and Disney. We advise readers to be highly skeptical of this rumor; AppleInsider first published an article more than 18 months ago that also suggested a possible Apple/Disney merger was in the works."

    This has popped up so many times, I laughed so hard when Drudge put this up there.

    And compared to Drudge.../. is hella better. When was the last time "the President's Talking Penis" was a 72 point headline on /.?

  • by istartedi (132515) on Monday July 10 2000, @05:35AM (#946409) Journal

    grain of salt the size of a Ford Taurus

    Next we'll see stuff like "this new graphics card is sweeter than a Pepsi on a hot summer day".

  • by cswiii (11061) on Monday July 10 2000, @03:13AM (#946421)
    ...means a truly mouse-driven user experience.

    /me dodges tomatoes.