ShadowRAM: January 28, 2008

Apple, America And The History Of The World
• For most of the MacWorld faithful, the new paper-thin MacBook Air stole the show. But for those who like their satire served up cold in the form of a pop song, the big draw was celebrated composer Randy Newman, who works with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' other blockbuster company, film maker Pixar.

Newman did not disappoint the crowd, taking a satiric swipe at this country, its leaders and even snooty Europeans who like to put down America.

"I was in Europe about a year ago, and I noticed that they don't like us very much," he said in his best deadpan drawl. "And I wanted to do something to sort of 'explicate' what America is: to sum it up in about two minutes and 27 seconds. So I wrote this."

"I'd like to say a few words in defense of our country, whose people aren't bad nor are they mean," sang Newman. "Now the leaders we have, while they are the worst we've had, are hardly the worst this poor world has seen. Let's turn history's page, shall we?"

Shall we, indeed. Newman went on to cite the barbarism of the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, Stalin and Hitler. In these politically correct times, the performance was right in line with Jobs' "I'm-going-to-do-it-my way-and-the-hell-with-the-rest-of-the-world" approach.

D&H: Beam Us Up
• D&H is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year and is planning a whole series of events, including a performance by a major circus company just for the distributor and its guests. So how does a company that was started in 1918 by David Schwab (the "D" in D&H) and brother-in-law Harry Spector (the "H") go from selling retreads to Cisco routers? That's the subject of a slide show at www.channelweb.com that is turning heads. One of the shots capturing the imagination of solution providers is the one here of the future D&H "Star Trek" team opening up new warehouses in the solar system. From left to right: Vice President of Sales Jeff Davis (aka Spock), Vice President of Marketing Dan Schwab (aka Captain Kirk) and Vice President of Purchasing Michael Schwab (aka Scotty).

SEEN AND HEARD
• AMD is still smarting from the now-infamous Barcelona quad-core processor glitch. But that didn't stop Taiwan giant ASUS from showing off its Barcelona board at CES. We have heard rumblings, though, that ASUS is set to pull back on its whitebook building blocks program. ASUS denies this, despite its big push of late to market its own line of branded notebooks.

• One of the things we love about the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is that even the rarified Swiss air can't get celebrity CEOs to let their guard down and candidly talk about the future. Our favorite tidbit from this year: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' proclamation that the PC is not dead. This was the only mention of the PC in an hourlong panel focused on the future of wireless machines. In a news conference after the panel discussion, Gates stressed that PC sales are not falling. In fact, he said while the PC growth rate has declined, the overall number is still "pretty healthy."