CES Day One: Apple BUYS Twitter and Shows their Tablet Computer, the iSlate
(crossposted from uber.la)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday Jan. 4, 2010, Las Vegas
Following directly on the surprise release of the Apple iSlate on opening day at CES 2010 in Las Vegas, Apple and Twitter announced Apple’s purchase of Twitter for 2 billion dollars in cash and stock. Jobs says they will phase out all non-Mac OS apps and access to the popular microblogging service. “We liked Twitter from the beginning. And we think people will like it more on a Mac so in 2011 we will begin phasing out all access to machines running non-Apple OS services.”
When Microsoft spokesman at CES, Haywood J Blow, was asked about Apple’s daring move he said, “When the corporate customer starts asking for Twitter, we will buy or invent something like Twitter. Apple has not won this war yet.” Shares of MSFT, DELL, HP all fell sharply in after-hours trading.
Tweetdeck and Seesmic announced their immediate support of the move saying it would reduce their development costs and give the end-user a more mac-like experience. Google had no immediate comment but shareholders voted to up their purchase of Apple stock by 20% a year. And a new version of Mac-only Google WAVE was also rumored to be only a few months down the roadmap.
Asked for a comment, the creator or Tweetdeck Iain Dodsworth said, “I’m a Mac. And all of our developers are on Mac’s so why wouldn’t we be the first open Twitter client to close down other platforms? By the end of 2010, if Windows is still the dominant computing platform, I’ll start using Seesmic and Hootesuite. Seriously!”
Michael Dell was contacted via his iPhone after the announcement, but offered no comment. He did update his Twitter status with this “Oh, that’s funny. I think that guy’s been writing about Dell for over a year now, ever since he left.” Bill Gates‘ iPhone was forwarding calls to his Google Voice account.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/apple-CES
Even before the announcement Apple’s new ad campaign was plastered across the CES walls today read, “Of course, tweeting is Better on a Mac.”
- Apple iSlate Released Before CES: Rumors Abound, Non-Apple Execs Faint
- Apple iPad – I Told You It Was Coming – The Apple Media iPad (updated)
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