drivebyubnt

HP also was a leader in device ergonomics. Their devices were pretty and easy to use, as well as reliable.

I don't think anyone had offices. It was all cubicles. (I worked at HP Labs in the 80's and met both Bill and Dave a couple of times.)

One cool thing HP had was "lab stock" cabinets on every floor that were full of free-for-experimentation ICs and other components. I think it's likely that the Apple I and Apple II computers were designed using components taken from those lab stock cabinets. (The story is that Steve W. tried to get HP interested in producing the Apple computers, but they just wouldn't go for it.)

I'd be careful about giving too much credit to the original ARM design. In retrospect, like many early RISC designs, it was over-optimised for its original application. Most of the unique/novel features of the original ARM architecture turned out to be bad ideas in the long run. Most of them were later removed from the architecture, or persist only in backwards compatibility modes.

ARM is ubiquitous today more due to business models and historical accident than to inherent superiority of the design. (See also x86.)

The main reason Google launches popular products by invitation only is to manage server load. Otherwise you get situations like the Pokemon Go launch, where the service was unreliable for the first few months.

He was a fellow at Atari too, without helping them very much. Alan's a great guy, a great speaker, and he made fundamental contributions to OO with Smalltalk. But probably his single biggest contribution was that he funded the creation the Alto out of his group's budget. (So as a VC rather than a scientist or manager.)

Have you read the mini-Msft blog? The big problem for msft employees is the up-or-out review system. If you don't make partner, the review process seems designed to kick you out of the company.

FWIW Java based mDNS libraries works fine on stock Android. I believe mDNS is the standards body name for the protocol that Bonjour uses.

Consider a ubiquity networks edge router lite. It is $99 and has 3 gigabit Ethernet ports and dual core MIPS CPU and hardware packet forwarding. Runs Debian Linux. Active community.