Founder's Corner: Dedicated to MOSR founder Ryan C. Meader Last Updated: March 3, 2007 It's been a while since I last updated this "Founder's Corner" and before I continue any further....I would just like to voice my deep appreciation to everyone who has taken the time to read this page, regardless of whether or not they elected to participate in the "Get Well Fund" that was set up by the Rumors site team & our partners at Xerces Int'l. I know it's had a particularly self-indulgent tone over the past few months since the page was first posted to the site three months ago, and the loyalty that so many of you have shown to the incredibly long & storied history of the site has definitely been the motivating factor behind my involvement in this project. It has varied greatly, from being one of a small handful at the beginning to now having some involvement from scores of people all around the world; I could count the number of articles that I've directly participated in writing on one hand over the past few years though they have been memorable ones. Although I agreed to keep the basic donation buttons/links in place for now, I would definitely like to say that my involvement in Rumors is about to increase significantly. Ever since this year's Macworld Expo San Francisco, my passion for this sometimes ridiculous, always weird and usually amazing cloak-and-dagger game has been rekindled. You can donate to the "Get-Well Fund" that Xerces and Rumors have created for Ryan & his young family by clicking this button (Major CC's, PayPal) or scrolling to the end of the page for more details. Our sincere thanks to all of the compassionate readers who have contributed so far. A lot of the work I have done over the past five years was on the iPhone and iTV (now AppleTV), and seeing them finally come to light was a strong follow-up shot to my favorite rumor of the past 12 years that Rumors has been 'on the air' as it were: the multi-platform adaptability inherent to Mac OS X and its ongoing development for x86 that led to the now-celebrated Intel partnership also known to some as "Star Trek: The Next Generation" after the original abortive effort to port Classic Mac OS 7 to the original Intel Pentium processor which was codenamed "Star Trek" at Infinite Loop and the old offices in Texas. But that's a story I'll save for another update, maybe one of the first installments of my new column on Rumors which will be looking forward as well as back through our decade-plus of history that you'd have to be there to believe.

To find an archived copy of the original "Founder's Corner" posting, simply click here. As much as I might cringe at its focus on the very devastating chronic pain problems and other personal matters which I have endeavored to keep quite separate from Rumors over the past few years since my conditions become chronic and severe, I have been encouraged at length by friends who have carried on this site and many other Xerces projects that I have had a hand in, to talk publicly about what I've been through in these years and help people understand just what it means when I type an article now; each keystroke exacts a price in incredibly severe pain. There are very few movements that I can make without pain now, and my hands are among the worst affected because I am so dependent on them for the work that I fell in love with as a teenager.

Writing has always been my passion, and although it was the right thing at the time to turn Rumors over to other people who were more focused on the computing world while I underwent the first several years of my progressive health problems, I am ready now to play a more active role in this project's next chapter.

I hope that you'll enjoy the retrospective articles that I have planned to look back on some of the most interesting chapters in the site's history -- most of which are not readily available through the various archives of MOSR's postings -- and I also look forward to doing the kind of active, forward-looking investigative reporting that makes Rumors so exciting to be a part of. You may not always see my by-line on an article, and I may not be doing most of the final-copy writing due to the pain involved....but the sheer strength of Apple's roadmap and the passion that I see radiating from everyone we talk to at Infinite Loop and Apple Inc's international offices has in turn revived my own passion for talking about all of this.

I think you'll like what we have in store for you in our next series of articles, and I expect to post several installments of my new column during the month of March as we reach for the most aggressive pace of updates we've ever had.

In the mean time, expect lots of changes to the site....new pages.....new regular columns by some of the most well known names in the Mac Web plus some new up and comers....and much, much more. Plus, all of those dead-end or unfinished pages should be filling up with good stuff in the next couple of weeks thanks to the newest members of our writing staff who have been pulled off of other Xerces sites to help us kick things into high gear around here.

I am particularly hopeful that now that I have overseen a major overhaul of Rumors' servers and network bandwidth (we are now in a backbone datacenter with an OC192 multi-peering optical fiber connection that offers many thousands of times the scalability of the distributed servers we previously used), we can continue to improve what we offer to you and we can therefore increase the portion of our publishing budget that comes from voluntary donations instead of advertising. Which means we can progressively refine the kinds of ads we accept and therefore give you a more streamlined experience, something I know that we all want on today's Web.

And now, we have far more capacity to provide no-lag, no-limitations Live Coverage of each & every Apple Event that takes place from here on out. Without sending you to temporary servers or using weird load-balancing technology as we have in the past.

That's just the start, but it's been a long time coming and we now have access to the kind of resources that any tier-one site can muster and that means no Slashdottings, no downtime; no ifs, ands, or buts.

Thanks again to everyone who's taken the time, energy, and hard earned dollars to help me take care of my family despite the steep medical debts I've had to accept in my struggles with chronic illness....and allow me to return to the work that I love. I now have to pay for each keystroke with extreme discomfort but it's work that I have been blessed with the rare opportunity to do and Apple's future is more exciting than ever; I wouldn't miss the months and years to come for all the comfort in the world -- and the support that you generous people have shown me makes it possible for me to keep on typing.

It's been an honor spending these past 12 years with you, watching Apple grow into the tremendous force for forward motion in humanity's technological evolution that it is today.....and I am very excited to act as your guide to what's next.

Sincerely -- with humble appreciation for every page view and each donation,

-Ryan C. Meader
Founder, Mac OS Rumors // Co-founder, Xerces Independent Partners Int'l // Founder & Administrator, the Black Hole community forum // Chairman, Chronic Pain Sufferers & Supporters' Alliance (CPSSA)

If you have enjoyed Rumors over the past 12 years, have benefitted from the coverage we provide, or if you just want to help out a young family that has suffered deep debts trying to alleviate their husband & father's extreme pain.....please consider making a donation to the "Get-Well Fund" that the Xerces partners have established for Ryan, his wife and baby son.

The simplest way to do so is to use the button below: all major credit cards are accepted, and you don't need a PayPal account (although paying from your PayPal account is also an option) to use it.