"Chris Alaimo" <cpalaimo[at]excite.com> writes:

> I'm not trying to be a smart-ass or start a war here or get
> flamed, I'm honestly curious about this. Why do you guys think that
> Apple has such a small marketshare if there computers are of higher
> quality, faster, and sport a superior OS? Please do not just
> respond that "97% of the population is stupid" or that "Bill Gates
> has brainwashed the populace." I'd like to hear some lucid
> intelligent opinions.

I.B.M. came out with the "P.C." a day late and a dollar short in the
early 80's. But businesses decided they needed cheap personal
computers about that time, and handing over money to a small upstart
company like Apple seemed like a "bad business decision" to them. As
90% of industry adopted cheap P.C.'s, so households followed,
because that's what most people used at work.

Essentially, the 90%+ market-share for the I.B.M. P.C. was there
from Day-1, because businesses bought them like hotcakes and "nobody
ever got fired for buying I.B.M."


--
Edward Dodge

/Confabulation Consulting/

In article <m1r850dgjk.fsf[at]g3.com>, Edward Dodge <someone[at]g3.com>
wrote:

> "Chris Alaimo" <cpalaimo[at]excite.com> writes:
>
> > I'm not trying to be a smart-ass or start a war here or get
> > flamed, I'm honestly curious about this. Why do you guys think that
> > Apple has such a small marketshare if there computers are of higher
> > quality, faster, and sport a superior OS? Please do not just
> > respond that "97% of the population is stupid" or that "Bill Gates
> > has brainwashed the populace." I'd like to hear some lucid
> > intelligent opinions.
>
> I.B.M. came out with the "P.C." a day late and a dollar short in the
> early 80's. But businesses decided they needed cheap personal
> computers about that time, and handing over money to a small upstart
> company like Apple seemed like a "bad business decision" to them. As
> 90% of industry adopted cheap P.C.'s, so households followed,
> because that's what most people used at work.
>
> Essentially, the 90%+ market-share for the I.B.M. P.C. was there
> from Day-1, because businesses bought them like hotcakes and "nobody
> ever got fired for buying I.B.M."

Although IBM did try to get my step-dad fired when he suggested that his
company might benefit from buying peripherals for its IBM mainframe from
someone other than IBM...

--
Alan Baker
Vancouver, British Columbia
"If you raise the ceiling 4 feet, move the fireplace from that wall
to that wall, you'll still only get the full stereophonic effect
if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard."

Edward Dodge <someone[at]g3.com> wrote:

> I.B.M. came out with the "P.C." a day late and a dollar short in the
> early 80's. But businesses decided they needed cheap personal
> computers about that time, and handing over money to a small upstart
> company like Apple seemed like a "bad business decision" to them...

That, plus Apple/Jobs have always had a talent for presenting their
computers as less serious, less powerful, more childish toys than they
actually may be. (When NeXT came out, its ads practically snubbed the
business market.) Their behavior is like showing up for a corpporate
job interview in Bermuda shorts.

So while IBM does have a size advantage, I won't be surprised if they
also simply presented a more serious and professional face.

-

Edward Dodge wrote in <m1r850dgjk.fsf[at]g3.com>:

>"Chris Alaimo" <cpalaimo[at]excite.com> writes:
>
>> I'm not trying to be a smart-ass or start a war here or get
>> flamed, I'm honestly curious about this. Why do you guys think that
>> Apple has such a small marketshare if there computers are of higher
>> quality, faster, and sport a superior OS? Please do not just
>> respond that "97% of the population is stupid" or that "Bill Gates
>> has brainwashed the populace." I'd like to hear some lucid
>> intelligent opinions.
>
>I.B.M. came out with the "P.C." a day late and a dollar short

This must be a reference to the fact that it was cheaper than the
competition's offerings...

>in the
>early 80's. But businesses decided they needed cheap personal
>computers about that time, and handing over money to a small upstart
>company like Apple seemed like a "bad business decision" to them. As

I'll never get tired of hearing this excuse. Faceless corporate
androids decided Apples sucked, that's why the company went nowhere.
Nothing to do with overpriced, overhyped computers that performed
rather poorly for all the money you spent on them.

>90% of industry adopted cheap P.C.'s, so households followed,
>because that's what most people used at work.
>
>Essentially, the 90%+ market-share for the I.B.M. P.C. was there
>from Day-1, because businesses bought them like hotcakes and "nobody
>ever got fired for buying I.B.M."

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's this self-pitying "we were
fated to be losers" attitude that drives people away from Apple. You
guys personify failure in so many ways.

"Edward Dodge" <someone[at]g3.com> wrote in message
news:m18yr7z7xz.fsf[at]g3.com...
> "Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> > But Microsoft would have stayed out of the OS business entirely if
> > Apple had given it a way to run its GUI-based apps on non-Apple
> > hardware -- either by liscensing the Mac platform or producing Mac
> > OS for Intel machines.
>
> Oh really? What was DOS all about then?
>

I should have said that Microsoft would have stayed out of the GUI OS
business entirely. That is MS saw the productivity apps that eventually
were bundled into office as potentially much more lucrative than MSDOS. If
Apple could have provided MS a way to leverage that technology and sell
those apps across the whole PC industry, MS would've jumped on it.

> > Windows was originally something Microsoft developed to be able to
> > sell its GUI-based productivity software (Word, Excel) across a much
> > wider market. Before 3.x, Windows wasn't an OS at all, but rather
> > an application layer that came bundled with Word, Excel, Pagemaker,
> > etc.
>
> Windows was essentially a graphical shell for DOS until Windows 95
> came out.

No, that's not really true. Yes, DOS still ran underneath (as it did in 95
and, to some extent in all 9.x versions through ME). But as of Windows 3.0,
Windows apps ran in a 286-protected mode address space. Some of the
services were still provided by the real mode DOS underneath, but some were
replaced by protected mode alternatives when Windows loaded. And of course
all the protected-mode Windows APIs were non-DOS. Windows 95 really added
just a new shell and a much fuller set of 32 bit APIs from NT. 32-bit APIs
had been partly added to Windows 3.1 with the Win32s subsystem, but Win32s
lacked some significant features -- threads in particular.

> Also, you seem to be forgetting that M$ and IBM were
> supposed to *co*-produce Windows/OS-2 for the P.C.

Not at all. MS started working on OS/2. They subsequently brought in IBM
as a partner. The IBM team insisted on wholesale changes to the API which
made Windows -> OS/2 ports non-trivial. Then MS released Windows 3.0 which
made ports of Windows 2.x apps to Windows 3.0 extremely simple. At the same
time, Windows 3.0 had much less expensive hardware requirements (RAM
particularly). So Windows 3.0 had both the cost advantage and the major
advantage of having more apps available. And then the MS / IBM partnership
fractured.

> Also: It is very
> unlikely Apple could have survived getting knifed in the back after
> "working with M$" to develop a GUI for the P.C. the way IBM did.
>

If Apple had given MS a GUI for the PC that would have enabled it to sell
Word and Excel, MS never would have continued with Windows development at
all. So you consider MS releasing Windows 3.x a knife in IBM's back? Why?
When the success of Windows 3.X became evident, IBM *could* have reversed
course and, in partnership with MS, put the Windows API onto the OS/2 kernel
to take advantage of the existing windows apps (which is what OS/2 should
have been in the first place and which is, of course, is what MS did with NT
after the partnership fell apart). But instead IBM insisted on continuing
with the Presentation Manager APIs and the OS/2 ultimately died for lack of
native apps.

Mark

"Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message
>
> Of course. With hindsight Apple could have pursued the larger market,
> at any cost, with its superior UI. The end result of this campaign is
> an unknown, however. I only point to all the successful commercial OS
> competitors to Microsoft still extant these days. . . hmmm, there
> aren't any.
>

Right -- the OS market is one where we have to expect 'natural monopolies'
due to network effects (the old VHS / Betamax effect). Apple lacked the
vision to see that it had to either become the dominant player or be pushed
out of business or into a small niche.

> Unfortunately for we Mac buyers at the time, *trying* sell 10x the
> machines at 1/10th the profit didn't make any sense to Apple once the
> platform took off.
>

Again, the wrong perspective. Apple needed to figure out that it focusing
on hardware profit (and profit margins) was preventing it from achieving its
potential. It needed to get past the 'the computer for the rest of us'
(which, because of it high prices and margins it could never achieve) to
'computing for the rest of us' (meaning software for all computers, not just
Apple's -- but Apple couldn't see that, so MS ended up realizing that
vision).

>
> > As for stability, I don't remember the early Mac OS as having been a
model
> > of stability at all--instead I remember that damn little cartoon bomb
> > popping up to tell you that you were screwed. Character-based PC word
> > processors on top of DOS were less flexible but more stable.
>
> Yes. The relative stability of System 6.0.x & 7.x over Windows 3.0/3.1
> was another story, however.
>

Were system 6/7 really more stable than windows 3.0/3.1? I have my doubts.
Certainly the underlying programming model in Windows 3.1 was more
advanced -- most significantly, it had real protected memory management and
real virtual memory, not that stupid-ass handle locking crap and manually
allocating memory to specific apps that Mac OS had for so long.

> >
> > But Microsoft would have stayed out of the OS business entirely if Apple
had
> > given it a way to run its GUI-based apps on non-Apple hardware
>
> Doubtful. Why would MS throw away a multibillion dollar market? Its
> MS-DOS OEMs would start looking for alternatives, even to some sort of
> x86 MacOS.
>

Because MS didn't see GUI operating systems as a multibillion dollar market
in their own right at that time. Then the GUI was just enabling software to
make Word and Excel run (which were expected to be the real multibillion
dollar babies -- as they turned out to be). It was a long road from Windows
1 to Windows 3. Apple could have gotten MS in a position to sell its
Mac-developed apps on x86 much faster than MS got there on its own.

> > -- either by
> > liscensing the Mac platform or producing Mac OS for Intel machines.
Windows
> > was originally something Microsoft developed to be able to sell its
> > GUI-based productivity software (Word, Excel) across a much wider
market.
> > Before 3.x, Windows wasn't an OS at all, but rather an application layer
> > that came bundled with Word, Excel, Pagemaker, etc.
>
> Win16 was an API, too.
>

API, application layer -- terminology. The point was Windows was packaged
as a library rather than an OS. It didn't come with DOS, it came bundled
with Word, Excel or Pagemaker.

> > > We forget, but in the late 80's & early 90's other platforms like OS/2
> > > and the Amiga made a fractured marketplace, where no one OS platform
> > > had over 50% of the PC market.
> > >
> >
> > Yes and no--the Intel PC-compatible hardware platform had over 50% of
the
> > market, and the eventual transition to a GUI OS was clear, but it wasn't
> > clear whether it was going to be Windows or OS/2.
>
> Yes:
>
> http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html
>
> has apparently excellent data on this!

So you're agreeing with me? The figures you provided do anyway:

PC + Clones market share
1988: 79%
1989: 83%
1990: 84%

>
> The MacOS licensees were being subsidized by Apple by hundreds of
> dollars / machine sold. If the MacOS licensee machine displaced an
> Apple-branded Mac, that was a net loss both to Apple and its ability
> to further its R&D.
>

Well right -- Apple needed to charge enough for its licenses to cover its
R&D costs for the platform. If they did not do so, then that was a quite a
stupid move on their part, no?

>
> better plan is to not put maroons in charge of your computer company.
>

Easier said than done...consistently. And anyway, its not just a question
of stupidity. Smart people make perfectly reasonable decisions that turn
out to be wrong. Sometimes the most logical bet doesn't pay off and the
favorite horse finishes out of the money. But for a given computing
platform if there are multiple companies pursuing different strategies, the
platform has redundancy. The Mac platform depends on Apple only making the
right calls year after year which is dangerous.

Mark

Steve Hanson wrote:

> Edward Dodge wrote in <m14r1vz7pn.fsf[at]g3.com>:
>
>
>>>Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's this self-pitying "we were
>>>fated to be losers" attitude that drives people away from Apple. You
>>>guys personify failure in so many ways.
>>
>>We're still here... you should save your hubris and supercilious
>>attitude for the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, the Cleco Adam, and
>>every other computer that was just as good or better than an IBM
>>P.C. Or are you going to back up your attitude with facts... like
>>why the IBM P.C. wasn't "late to the party" in respects to all these
>>other machines, and why pasting "IBM" on a computer *doesn't* make
>>it an shoe-in for sales...
>
>
> A "shoe-in"--funny concept. I repeat, stop feeling sorry for
> yourself. The system you worship had the same chance as all the rest,
> and it's an also-ran. Five years from now, barring a miracle, 2%
> marketshare will seem like "the good old days" to you. Even now the
> old 10% figure seems like a pipe dream. Just think--you coulda been a
> contenda!
>
>
>>Thanks for playing... now run along, small children with nothing to
>>offer but taunts and attitude belong on the playground, enjoying
>>their childhood... not wasting time on USENET pretending to be an adult.
>
>
> Grab a mirror.

I know! What is with these fools? Just the other day I stood in a
parking lot shaking my head at some poor sucker driving a Porsche. I
told him the same thing: also-ran...small market share...Fords are just
as good...only thing that matters is Winston Cup ...powerwindows are
copied from Chrysler ....called him a fool, told him to buy a Ford and a
Dell and join the masses. I told him that being different was wrong-
told him that he was a shameless Porsche Faschist with a pipe dream.
What an idiot.

He stared at me a second, put his Powerbook on the passenger seat and
drive away.

Poor sucker.

"Flip" <flip[at]flippo.com> wrote in message
news:flip-CF1A08.10222210072003[at]nnrp06.earthlink.net...
> In article <LB-dnd17P5_j75CiXTWJiA[at]comcast.com>,
> "Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote:
>
> > "Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message
> > >
> > > Of course. With hindsight Apple could have pursued the larger market,
> > > at any cost, with its superior UI. The end result of this campaign is
> > > an unknown, however. I only point to all the successful commercial OS
> > > competitors to Microsoft still extant these days. . . hmmm, there
> > > aren't any.
> > >
> >
> > Right -- the OS market is one where we have to expect 'natural
monopolies'
> > due to network effects (the old VHS / Betamax effect). Apple lacked the
> > vision to see that it had to either become the dominant player or be
pushed
> > out of business or into a small niche.
>
> That's nonsense. It's only 'obvious' in retrospect that the relevant
> network affect applied to the OS.
>

Hmm. When was the VHS / Beta analogy first discussed with respect to MS and
Apple? I guess somebody with acces to the LexisNexis database might be able
to check, but I would guess the first reference dates to the 1980's
sometime. It's not a recent insight in any case.

> At the time, it was plausible to think that as long as you could read
> and write the files that everyone else used, that you'd be OK.
>

Really? I don't remember that being the conventional wisdom.

> Otherwise, how do you explain the millions of dollars IBM pumped into
> OS/2? Did they not understand network effects? And Sun. And so on.

No -- IBM understood. They just thought that OS/2 was going to be *the* PC
operating system of the future and Windows was going to be transitional
footnote only. And they were sure they were going to win because...well,
c'mon, they were I-B-M. As for Sun -- they didn't think they were in the
same market at all (and it did take a long time for cheap Intel machines to
seriously threaten Sun's server business).

Mark

Lloyd Parsons wrote in <100720030013148519%lloydparsons[at]mac.com>:

>In article <oulpgv0nhfah1g9k184mtj0v3iirgo91s9[at]4ax.com>, Steve Hanson
><icustomercare[at]usps.com> wrote:
>
>> Lloyd Parsons wrote in <090720032052459894%lloydparsons[at]mac.com>:
>>
>> >In article <l0hpgvc4ui0tharrpv23bqnh0u6ki5j2c0[at]4ax.com>, Steve Hanson
>> ><icustomercare[at]usps.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Edward Dodge wrote in <m14r1vz7pn.fsf[at]g3.com>:
>> >>
>> >> >> Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's this self-pitying "we were
>> >> >> fated to be losers" attitude that drives people away from Apple. You
>> >> >> guys personify failure in so many ways.
>> >> >
>> >> >We're still here... you should save your hubris and supercilious
>> >> >attitude for the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, the Cleco Adam, and
>> >> >every other computer that was just as good or better than an IBM
>> >> >P.C. Or are you going to back up your attitude with facts... like
>> >> >why the IBM P.C. wasn't "late to the party" in respects to all these
>> >> >other machines, and why pasting "IBM" on a computer *doesn't* make
>> >> >it an shoe-in for sales...
>> >>
>> >> A "shoe-in"--funny concept. I repeat, stop feeling sorry for
>> >> yourself. The system you worship had the same chance as all the rest,
>> >> and it's an also-ran. Five years from now, barring a miracle, 2%
>> >> marketshare will seem like "the good old days" to you. Even now the
>> >> old 10% figure seems like a pipe dream. Just think--you coulda been a
>> >> contenda!
>> >>
>> >I know that market-share is manna for you windroids as you all want to
>> >compare Apple to ALL the wintel hw makers. But it doesn't wash. Apple
>> >is BIGGER than MOST wintel manufacturers and is profitable, which MOST
>> >wintel mfg's aren't.
>> >
>> >Jealous?
>>
>> No, I look at the volume and quality of software development for the
>> PC platform and somehow I feel better. Most Wintel manufacturers
>> didn't paint themselves into a proprietary corner, did they? ;-)
>
>The volume of software doesn't concern me much as I can only use one
>wordprocessor at a time.... ;-)

That's great if all you use is word processors and the only one you
like or need to use in the course of the day is on your proprietary
platform.

But, well, there's a world of software out there besides word
processors.

Take Usenet newsreaders. The Mac has nothing that comes within a mile
of Forte Agent. Take programming IDEs--you can't get Visual
Studio.NET on a Mac. Take financial software. No Microsoft Money for
you. Oh, and then there's entertainment software (assuming staring at
the Beach Ball of Doom isn't entertainment enough for you folks).

What was that you were saying about variety? Oh, right. You
conspicuously avoided it, instead trying to make a virtue of
necessity. Somehow the lack of software choices on the Mac is a
bonus! ROTFL

>In the wintel world, not only are the mfg's in trouble, the dealer
>channel is also in trouble. Service is the ONLY profit center left.
>Dell has literally driven all the profit out of hardware. I watch

This is how the Mac user sees it: greater efficiency from economy of
scale and distribution plus better deals for the consumer = BAD! Boy,
Jobs has you idiots well-trained. You see, in the Mac world
inefficient companies charging high margins to a captive (and
shrinking) market is (cue inmate Martha Stewart) A GOOD THING.

wheat wrote in <bek00a$b1$1[at]geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>:

>Steve Hanson wrote:
>
>> Edward Dodge wrote in <m14r1vz7pn.fsf[at]g3.com>:
>>
>>
>>>>Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's this self-pitying "we were
>>>>fated to be losers" attitude that drives people away from Apple. You
>>>>guys personify failure in so many ways.
>>>
>>>We're still here... you should save your hubris and supercilious
>>>attitude for the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, the Cleco Adam, and
>>>every other computer that was just as good or better than an IBM
>>>P.C. Or are you going to back up your attitude with facts... like
>>>why the IBM P.C. wasn't "late to the party" in respects to all these
>>>other machines, and why pasting "IBM" on a computer *doesn't* make
>>>it an shoe-in for sales...
>>
>>
>> A "shoe-in"--funny concept. I repeat, stop feeling sorry for
>> yourself. The system you worship had the same chance as all the rest,
>> and it's an also-ran. Five years from now, barring a miracle, 2%
>> marketshare will seem like "the good old days" to you. Even now the
>> old 10% figure seems like a pipe dream. Just think--you coulda been a
>> contenda!
>>
>>
>>>Thanks for playing... now run along, small children with nothing to
>>>offer but taunts and attitude belong on the playground, enjoying
>>>their childhood... not wasting time on USENET pretending to be an adult.
>>
>>
>> Grab a mirror.
>
>I know! What is with these fools? Just the other day I stood in a
>parking lot shaking my head at some poor sucker driving a Porsche. I

Look, a car analogy. He's either never posted to Usenet before or he
doesn't realize how boring he is.

In article <Mr-cnY4CQOh7E5CiXTWJkw[at]comcast.com>,
"Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote:

> "Flip" <flip[at]flippo.com> wrote in message
> news:flip-CF1A08.10222210072003[at]nnrp06.earthlink.net...
> > In article <LB-dnd17P5_j75CiXTWJiA[at]comcast.com>,
> > "Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote:
> >
> > > "Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message
> > > >
> > > > Of course. With hindsight Apple could have pursued the larger market,
> > > > at any cost, with its superior UI. The end result of this campaign is
> > > > an unknown, however. I only point to all the successful commercial OS
> > > > competitors to Microsoft still extant these days. . . hmmm, there
> > > > aren't any.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Right -- the OS market is one where we have to expect 'natural
> monopolies'
> > > due to network effects (the old VHS / Betamax effect). Apple lacked the
> > > vision to see that it had to either become the dominant player or be
> pushed
> > > out of business or into a small niche.
> >
> > That's nonsense. It's only 'obvious' in retrospect that the relevant
> > network affect applied to the OS.
> >
>
> Hmm. When was the VHS / Beta analogy first discussed with respect to MS and
> Apple? I guess somebody with acces to the LexisNexis database might be able
> to check, but I would guess the first reference dates to the 1980's
> sometime. It's not a recent insight in any case.

So?

How does that prove that it was obvious that it was the OS and not the
apps (or even the file formats) which has the most important network
effects?

>
> > At the time, it was plausible to think that as long as you could read
> > and write the files that everyone else used, that you'd be OK.
> >
>
> Really? I don't remember that being the conventional wisdom.

I never said it was. I said that it wasn't obvious that the OS is what
mattered - as you've alleged.

"Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote in message news:<LB-dnd17P5_j75CiXTWJiA[at]comcast.com>...
> "Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message
> >
> > Of course. With hindsight Apple could have pursued the larger market,
> > at any cost, with its superior UI. The end result of this campaign is
> > an unknown, however. I only point to all the successful commercial OS
> > competitors to Microsoft still extant these days. . . hmmm, there
> > aren't any.
> >
>
> Right -- the OS market is one where we have to expect 'natural monopolies'
> due to network effects (the old VHS / Betamax effect). Apple lacked the
> vision to see that it had to either become the dominant player or be pushed
> out of business or into a small niche.

Apple in 1995 and 2000 sold ~4.5M Macs -- more than all the Apple II's
they ever shipped. Some niche! For all we know they may do it again in
2005, if Longhorn slips another year.

At this scale, Apple's absolute worldwide marketshare has little
effect (outside of cheaper machines due to higher sales volume paying
for the R&D overhead) to me; what I need is people with similar
software requirements buying into the platform (and people interested
in my work, if I ever start working on my app again).

> > Unfortunately for we Mac buyers at the time, *trying* sell 10x the
> > machines at 1/10th the profit didn't make any sense to Apple once the
> > platform took off.
> >
>
> Again, the wrong perspective. Apple needed to figure out that it focusing
> on hardware profit (and profit margins) was preventing it from achieving its
> potential.

Disagree. Apple's potential *is* its hardware. Becoming an OS and app
vendor would just expose it to *all* of Microsoft's dirty tricks , eg.
its licensing leverage over OEM's like Dell.

> It needed to get past the 'the computer for the rest of us'
> (which, because of it high prices and margins it could never achieve)

This book remains to be fully written. Apple could pull the trigger on
a money-making $500 iMac tomorrow.

> to
> 'computing for the rest of us' (meaning software for all computers, not just
> Apple's -- but Apple couldn't see that, so MS ended up realizing that
> vision).

Apple without Apple hardware is no longer Apple. Companies can rip-off
your software, but so far nobody has been able to rip-off Apple's
hardware integration.

Gateway is trying to become a "branded integrator", but here's what
they said recently:

"Those (new products) include products that we can own, that we can
have more exclusive positions on, that we do fun and interesting
things with. It is very hard to do these days in the PC world unless
you have Microsoft's seal of approval. "

I'm not quite sure what you're counter-proposing where Apple should be
right now... an x86 OS vendor? An x86 apps vendor?

Perhaps an x86 OS X is still in the cards. I don't see it hurting the
platform's PPC sales that much these days, as people drawn to OS X on
x86 wouldn't be buying a Mac anyway.

> > > As for stability, I don't remember the early Mac OS as having been a
> model
> > > of stability at all--instead I remember that damn little cartoon bomb
> > > popping up to tell you that you were screwed. Character-based PC word
> > > processors on top of DOS were less flexible but more stable.
> >
> > Yes. The relative stability of System 6.0.x & 7.x over Windows 3.0/3.1
> > was another story, however.
> >
>
> Were system 6/7 really more stable than windows 3.0/3.1? I have my doubts.

Doubt away. GPF's were 3.0's strong suit. 6.0x and 7.0 were excellent
products, with years of development and testing. Things went south for
the Mac in the 7.5.x days, where competitive pressures with Win95,
Copland, etc. drove the company's engineering off its leisurely pace.

> Certainly the underlying programming model in Windows 3.1 was more
> advanced -- most significantly, it had real protected memory management and
> real virtual memory, not that stupid-ass handle locking crap and manually
> allocating memory to specific apps that Mac OS had for so long.

These were weak areas that caused a lot of instability. My only real
experience with 3.1 was in the months immediately prior to 95's
release, but what I saw there was enough to scar me for life. I fully
understand why people were waiting in lines at midnight to get 3.1's
replacement.

> > > But Microsoft would have stayed out of the OS business entirely if Apple
> had
> > > given it a way to run its GUI-based apps on non-Apple hardware
> >
> > Doubtful. Why would MS throw away a multibillion dollar market? Its
> > MS-DOS OEMs would start looking for alternatives, even to some sort of
> > x86 MacOS.
> >
>
> Because MS didn't see GUI operating systems as a multibillion dollar market
> in their own right at that time. Then the GUI was just enabling software to
> make Word and Excel run (which were expected to be the real multibillion
> dollar babies -- as they turned out to be). It was a long road from Windows
> 1 to Windows 3. Apple could have gotten MS in a position to sell its
> Mac-developed apps on x86 much faster than MS got there on its own.

Regardless, MS would have knifed Apple just as they ended up knifing
IBM.
"NT? Oh that's MacOS NT. It'll be great. You'll love it."

> > > -- either by
> > > liscensing the Mac platform or producing Mac OS for Intel machines.
> Windows
> > > was originally something Microsoft developed to be able to sell its
> > > GUI-based productivity software (Word, Excel) across a much wider
> market.
> > > Before 3.x, Windows wasn't an OS at all, but rather an application layer
> > > that came bundled with Word, Excel, Pagemaker, etc.
> >
> > Win16 was an API, too.
> >
>
> API, application layer -- terminology. The point was Windows was packaged
> as a library rather than an OS. It didn't come with DOS, it came bundled
> with Word, Excel or Pagemaker.

My argument is talking about platforms. Windows was a platform for
apps.

> > > > We forget, but in the late 80's & early 90's other platforms like OS/2
> > > > and the Amiga made a fractured marketplace, where no one OS platform
> > > > had over 50% of the PC market.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Yes and no--the Intel PC-compatible hardware platform had over 50% of
> the
> > > market, and the eventual transition to a GUI OS was clear, but it wasn't
> > > clear whether it was going to be Windows or OS/2.
> >
> > Yes:
> >
> > http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html
> >
> > has apparently excellent data on this!
>
> So you're agreeing with me? The figures you provided do anyway:
>
> PC + Clones market share
> 1988: 79%
> 1989: 83%
> 1990: 84%

No, because the PC market was divided into several separate OS
platforms. (But people running Windows could pop back between DOS and
Windows 3 quite easily, of course.)

Your argument that Apple would be "bigger" now if they had opened up
their platform prior to Windows 3.0 is debatable, as either the x86
MacOS would have been a suitable replacement for a 68k Mac (if so
Apple loses), or not (in this case it wouldn't necessarily grab any
traction unless Apple stayed Microsoft's good graces, kissing its ring
whenever required).

Moving an OS soley into x86 space just seems like a disaster movie in
the making. If you move into Microsoft's markets, bring your own air
supply.

> > The MacOS licensees were being subsidized by Apple by hundreds of
> > dollars / machine sold. If the MacOS licensee machine displaced an
> > Apple-branded Mac, that was a net loss both to Apple and its ability
> > to further its R&D.
> >
>
> Well right -- Apple needed to charge enough for its licenses to cover its
> R&D costs for the platform. If they did not do so, then that was a quite a
> stupid move on their part, no?

Yes, it was. The idea, though, was that the licensees would be
expanding the market, not cherry-picking Apple's best customers.

> > better plan is to not put maroons in charge of your computer company.
> >
>
> Easier said than done...consistently. And anyway, its not just a question
> of stupidity. Smart people make perfectly reasonable decisions that turn
> out to be wrong. Sometimes the most logical bet doesn't pay off and the
> favorite horse finishes out of the money. But for a given computing
> platform if there are multiple companies pursuing different strategies, the
> platform has redundancy.

And evolutionary gridlock. USB languished unused on x86 motherboards
until Apple properly supported it (exclusively). I like Apple's
ability to put together industry-leading solutions (eg. "Airport")
years ahead of its Wintel competition.

> The Mac platform depends on Apple only making the right calls year
after year which is dangerous.

You seem to be ignoring Wintel's... difficulties... in this area.

The whole RAMBUS debacle for instance.

And I don't see this "danger" you're talking about, provided the
people running the company are marginally competent. Which I assure
you Sculley and Spindler were not.

One look at store.apple.com -- and I just say "damn" -- Apple is
hitting on all cylinders.

(now we just need that $500 G5 iMac...)

=Heywood=

In article <lo3rgvc5gfiit3irgsgua444m8q4qgqd6j[at]4ax.com>,
Steve Hanson <icustomercare[at]usps.com> wrote:

> wheat wrote in <bek00a$b1$1[at]geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>:
>
> >Steve Hanson wrote:
> >
> >> Edward Dodge wrote in <m14r1vz7pn.fsf[at]g3.com>:
> >>
> >>
> >>>>Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's this self-pitying "we were
> >>>>fated to be losers" attitude that drives people away from Apple. You
> >>>>guys personify failure in so many ways.
> >>>
> >>>We're still here... you should save your hubris and supercilious
> >>>attitude for the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, the Cleco Adam, and
> >>>every other computer that was just as good or better than an IBM
> >>>P.C. Or are you going to back up your attitude with facts... like
> >>>why the IBM P.C. wasn't "late to the party" in respects to all these
> >>>other machines, and why pasting "IBM" on a computer *doesn't* make
> >>>it an shoe-in for sales...
> >>
> >>
> >> A "shoe-in"--funny concept. I repeat, stop feeling sorry for
> >> yourself. The system you worship had the same chance as all the rest,
> >> and it's an also-ran. Five years from now, barring a miracle, 2%
> >> marketshare will seem like "the good old days" to you. Even now the
> >> old 10% figure seems like a pipe dream. Just think--you coulda been a
> >> contenda!
> >>
> >>
> >>>Thanks for playing... now run along, small children with nothing to
> >>>offer but taunts and attitude belong on the playground, enjoying
> >>>their childhood... not wasting time on USENET pretending to be an adult.
> >>
> >>
> >> Grab a mirror.
> >
> >I know! What is with these fools? Just the other day I stood in a
> >parking lot shaking my head at some poor sucker driving a Porsche. I
>
> Look, a car analogy. He's either never posted to Usenet before or he
> doesn't realize how boring he is.

The analogy remains useful

Cars and computers are both expensive purchases where you can get
largely the same functionality from different vendors at very different
price points.

That some people choose more expensive offerings for the benefits that
they perceive to be sufficient doesn't seem to be strange to you when it
happens with cars, so why should it be strange when it happens with
computers?

Why are you even here?

--
Alan Baker
Vancouver, British Columbia
"If you raise the ceiling 4 feet, move the fireplace from that wall
to that wall, you'll still only get the full stereophonic effect
if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard."

Steve Hanson <icustomercare[at]usps.com> writes:

> wheat wrote in <bek00a$b1$1[at]geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>:
>
> >Steve Hanson wrote:

[...]

> >> Grab a mirror.
> >
> >I know! What is with these fools? Just the other day I stood in a
> >parking lot shaking my head at some poor sucker driving a Porsche.
> >I
>
> Look, a car analogy. He's either never posted to Usenet before or
> he doesn't realize how boring he is.

College chemistry was boring too, but that didn't change the fact that
it was good knowledge. There's a French saying that I will translate
for you (because obviously, someone like you only needs one computer,
one language, one car model). It goes like this:

"The same things get said over and over for one reason: nobody listens."

--
Edward Dodge

/Confabulation Consulting/

"Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message
> >
> > Right -- the OS market is one where we have to expect 'natural
monopolies'
> > due to network effects (the old VHS / Betamax effect). Apple lacked the
> > vision to see that it had to either become the dominant player or be
pushed
> > out of business or into a small niche.
>
> Apple in 1995 and 2000 sold ~4.5M Macs -- more than all the Apple II's
> they ever shipped. Some niche! For all we know they may do it again in
> 2005, if Longhorn slips another year.
>

Obviously it remains a small niche in terms of market share. How much does
that matter? Well clearly Apple has far fewer units to distribute the costs
of its platform R&D over than MS. Which means Apple has to charge more and
even then it has to do more with much less. Why more? Because to attract
customers they have to offer some additional benefits that are compelling
enough to at least a small percentage of market just to outweight the
disadvantages of incompatibility with the (near) universal platform (which
advantages don't cost MS a dime).

But maybe there's only so much money you can throw at platform development
and get significant returns and maybe Apple's market is big enough to supply
the funds they need to keep up with the game indefinitely. Time will tell.

But I think the real wildcard is Linux. Maybe Apple can survive
indefinitely as a distant second -- but what about as a 3rd? Linux is
gaining mindshare as the main Windows-alternative OS (witness the German
city of Munich deciding to switch to Linux -- not Mac -- for 14,000 desktop
computers. BTW, Munich has enough bureaucrats to need 14 THOUSAND
desktops?!? Now *that's* scary). And, of course, Linux has a great deal of
mindshare in one of Apple's traditional bastions (namely universities).
Plus, of course, it is possible to dual-boot Linux with Windows on the same
machine and even run many Windows apps at near native speeds with the
Codeweavers stuff.

> > >
> >
> > Again, the wrong perspective. Apple needed to figure out that it
focusing
> > on hardware profit (and profit margins) was preventing it from achieving
its
> > potential.
>
> Disagree. Apple's potential *is* its hardware. Becoming an OS and app
> vendor would just expose it to *all* of Microsoft's dirty tricks , eg.
> its licensing leverage over OEM's like Dell.
>

There's a difference between what Apple should have done 15 years ago and
what it should do now. The personal computer industry was much less mature
then. Apple doesn't have the same opportunities now.


> > It needed to get past the 'the computer for the rest of us'
> > (which, because of it high prices and margins it could never achieve)
>
> This book remains to be fully written. Apple could pull the trigger on
> a money-making $500 iMac tomorrow.
>

Could they? Setting aside the cost of manufacturing the components, what is
Apple's platform R&D cost per machine that has to be included in the cost of
the computer? Can it come close to the $50 or so that MS charges big OEMs
for Windows?

> > to
> > 'computing for the rest of us' (meaning software for all computers, not
just
> > Apple's -- but Apple couldn't see that, so MS ended up realizing that
> > vision).
>
> Apple without Apple hardware is no longer Apple. Companies can rip-off
> your software, but so far nobody has been able to rip-off Apple's
> hardware integration.
>

Well, if the hardware integration is such a compelling value, then why did
Apple have to shut down the Mac clone-makers? Why did they have to worry
about customers migrating to the clones (which lacked the tight
integration)? Could it be that even Mac customers also put a lot of weight
on low price when given the choice?

>
> I'm not quite sure what you're counter-proposing where Apple should be
> right now... an x86 OS vendor? An x86 apps vendor?
>

Apple seems kind of stuck in its box, doesn't it? Anything that it might do
to sell more copies of OSX and its software (license the platform, produce
Wintel versions of its software) potentially threatens the hardware
business. Any other software vendor with well-reguarded applications like
Apple's iTunes, iMovie, and iPhoto would definitely be selling Windows
versions. But Apple won't do it (except maybe iTunes to support MP3 player
sales).

Kind of an interesting problem to imagine playing CEO of Apple. One thing
I'd definitely do is bring back the cloners (while charging a per-machine
license fee that meant the clones would be paying their way to support R&D).

>
> > Certainly the underlying programming model in Windows 3.1 was more
> > advanced -- most significantly, it had real protected memory management
and
> > real virtual memory, not that stupid-ass handle locking crap and
manually
> > allocating memory to specific apps that Mac OS had for so long.
>
> These were weak areas that caused a lot of instability. My only real
> experience with 3.1 was in the months immediately prior to 95's
> release, but what I saw there was enough to scar me for life. I fully
> understand why people were waiting in lines at midnight to get 3.1's
> replacement.
>

Hmmm. Well 95 was a definite step up (as were the 32-bit apps that it, but
not Windows 3.11, could run). But I used (and developed for) Windows 3.11
for a long time with success. IIRC, the big weak spot was the system
resources heap that was limited to 64K -- when that filled up you were SOL,
so you had to watch that.


> >
> > Because MS didn't see GUI operating systems as a multibillion dollar
market
> > in their own right at that time. Then the GUI was just enabling
software to
> > make Word and Excel run (which were expected to be the real multibillion
> > dollar babies -- as they turned out to be). It was a long road from
Windows
> > 1 to Windows 3. Apple could have gotten MS in a position to sell its
> > Mac-developed apps on x86 much faster than MS got there on its own.
>
> Regardless, MS would have knifed Apple just as they ended up knifing
> IBM.
> "NT? Oh that's MacOS NT. It'll be great. You'll love it."
>

I don't quite follow. But the point was that if MS had let Apple do the GUI
development across the PC platform to support Word and Excel, MS never would
have become the colossus in the OS market that *could* muscle anybody
around.

> >
> > So you're agreeing with me? The figures you provided do anyway:
> >
> > PC + Clones market share
> > 1988: 79%
> > 1989: 83%
> > 1990: 84%
>
> No, because the PC market was divided into several separate OS
> platforms. (But people running Windows could pop back between DOS and
> Windows 3 quite easily, of course.)
>

But OS/2 never had much of a market-share. So nearly all of that dominant
x86 share was DOS & DOS/Windows.

> Your argument that Apple would be "bigger" now if they had opened up
> their platform prior to Windows 3.0 is debatable, as either the x86
> MacOS would have been a suitable replacement for a 68k Mac (if so
> Apple loses),

But why on earth would Apple have lost in that case? Mac OS with a 90+%
share of the market would make Apple a much bigger company than it is now.
Apple would be OS / systems half of what MS is now -- which is to say much
bigger and more profitable than the current Apple.

> or not (in this case it wouldn't necessarily grab any
> traction unless Apple stayed Microsoft's good graces, kissing its ring
> whenever required).
>

In that hypothetical scenario, Apple would have also ended up with half MS's
current size & power.

> Moving an OS soley into x86 space just seems like a disaster movie in
> the making. If you move into Microsoft's markets, bring your own air
> supply.
>

No, I don't think that x86 would be a good move for Apple now. But in the
mid 80's, that was what MS *wanted* Apple to do. They wanted a way to be
able to sell their GUI apps on x86 and Apple could have provided the most
direct route to that.

> >
> > Well right -- Apple needed to charge enough for its licenses to cover
its
> > R&D costs for the platform. If they did not do so, then that was a
quite a
> > stupid move on their part, no?
>
> Yes, it was. The idea, though, was that the licensees would be
> expanding the market, not cherry-picking Apple's best customers.
>

Right -- but if they charged enough for the licensing, Apple would make as
much from a clone machine sale as one of their own. So it wouldn't really
matter.

> > > better plan is to not put maroons in charge of your computer company.
> > >
> >
> > Easier said than done...consistently. And anyway, its not just a
question
> > of stupidity. Smart people make perfectly reasonable decisions that
turn
> > out to be wrong. Sometimes the most logical bet doesn't pay off and the
> > favorite horse finishes out of the money. But for a given computing
> > platform if there are multiple companies pursuing different strategies,
the
> > platform has redundancy.
>
> And evolutionary gridlock.

Evolutionary gridlock?!? Is that a metaphor from natural science or did
you just make that up. I have to say I've never heard of evolution by
natural selection being described as suffering from gridlock.

> USB languished unused on x86 motherboards
> until Apple properly supported it (exclusively). I like Apple's
> ability to put together industry-leading solutions (eg. "Airport")
> years ahead of its Wintel competition.
>

Shrug. Apple puts bleeding-edge hardware in their computers as a way of
justifiying (and a cause of) the premium prices. But they often get it
wrong. For exampe, DVD-RAM wasn't the right call for a recordable DVD
format. And Apple put in the overpriced DVD recordable drives too soon
(which, being bleeding edge, required very pricey media) and at the same
time neglected to support the much more popular and usable CDR.

In any case, USB only languished unused until MS got around to providing
full support in Windows. Once there was a critical mass of Wintel machines
with hardware and OS software supporting USB, the peripheral manufacturers
got on board.

> > The Mac platform depends on Apple only making the right calls year
> after year which is dangerous.
>
> You seem to be ignoring Wintel's... difficulties... in this area.
>
> The whole RAMBUS debacle for instance.
>
> And I don't see this "danger" you're talking about, provided the
> people running the company are marginally competent. Which I assure
> you Sculley and Spindler were not.
>

Given you earlier evolutionary metaphor you might be interested in a book
called 'Song of the Dodo'. There's a chapter in it called 'Rarity unto
death'. The point is that rare creatures are vulnerable to a whole host of
random disasters that more numerous species are not--one nasty drought or
hurricane or virus, etc can wipe out the remaining population (or drive it
down to a point of no return).

> One look at store.apple.com -- and I just say "damn" -- Apple is
> hitting on all cylinders.
>

All cylinders? But even so they're shipping fewer units than in 1995 and
2000?

> (now we just need that $500 G5 iMac...)
>

That'd be a heck of a product for Apple if they could do it -- but I'm
skeptical.

Mark

In article <ta3rgv0bvbqkgk4prd3ull5qh9f9un7891[at]4ax.com>, Steve Hanson
<icustomercare[at]usps.com> wrote:

> Lloyd Parsons wrote in <100720030013148519%lloydparsons[at]mac.com>:
>
> >In article <oulpgv0nhfah1g9k184mtj0v3iirgo91s9[at]4ax.com>, Steve Hanson
> ><icustomercare[at]usps.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Lloyd Parsons wrote in <090720032052459894%lloydparsons[at]mac.com>:
> >>
> >> >In article <l0hpgvc4ui0tharrpv23bqnh0u6ki5j2c0[at]4ax.com>, Steve Hanson
> >> ><icustomercare[at]usps.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Edward Dodge wrote in <m14r1vz7pn.fsf[at]g3.com>:
> >> >>
> >> >> >> Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's this self-pitying "we were
> >> >> >> fated to be losers" attitude that drives people away from Apple. You
> >> >> >> guys personify failure in so many ways.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >We're still here... you should save your hubris and supercilious
> >> >> >attitude for the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, the Cleco Adam, and
> >> >> >every other computer that was just as good or better than an IBM
> >> >> >P.C. Or are you going to back up your attitude with facts... like
> >> >> >why the IBM P.C. wasn't "late to the party" in respects to all these
> >> >> >other machines, and why pasting "IBM" on a computer *doesn't* make
> >> >> >it an shoe-in for sales...
> >> >>
> >> >> A "shoe-in"--funny concept. I repeat, stop feeling sorry for
> >> >> yourself. The system you worship had the same chance as all the rest,
> >> >> and it's an also-ran. Five years from now, barring a miracle, 2%
> >> >> marketshare will seem like "the good old days" to you. Even now the
> >> >> old 10% figure seems like a pipe dream. Just think--you coulda been a
> >> >> contenda!
> >> >>
> >> >I know that market-share is manna for you windroids as you all want to
> >> >compare Apple to ALL the wintel hw makers. But it doesn't wash. Apple
> >> >is BIGGER than MOST wintel manufacturers and is profitable, which MOST
> >> >wintel mfg's aren't.
> >> >
> >> >Jealous?
> >>
> >> No, I look at the volume and quality of software development for the
> >> PC platform and somehow I feel better. Most Wintel manufacturers
> >> didn't paint themselves into a proprietary corner, did they? ;-)
> >
> >The volume of software doesn't concern me much as I can only use one
> >wordprocessor at a time.... ;-)
>
> That's great if all you use is word processors and the only one you
> like or need to use in the course of the day is on your proprietary
> platform.

Of course, in this case, MS Word is the standard and it is on OSX and
arguably better than what it is in Windows.
>
> But, well, there's a world of software out there besides word
> processors.
>
> Take Usenet newsreaders. The Mac has nothing that comes within a mile
> of Forte Agent.

That's your opinion. Before I made the switch I had looked at Forte
Agent and didn't care for it. I do, however, like Thoth which is only
available on the mac.

> Take programming IDEs--you can't get Visual
> Studio.NET on a Mac.

Can't comment, I'm not a programmer.

> Take financial software. No Microsoft Money for
> you.

And your point is? Quicken is as good as Money even if it is not as
neat looking as Money is.

> Oh, and then there's entertainment software (assuming staring at
> the Beach Ball of Doom isn't entertainment enough for you folks).
>
I've never seen that beachball and I use a game console for gaming.

All other forms of electronic entertainment are better served on my
Mac, IMHO.


> What was that you were saying about variety? Oh, right. You
> conspicuously avoided it, instead trying to make a virtue of
> necessity. Somehow the lack of software choices on the Mac is a
> bonus! ROTFL
>
There is plenty of variety, just not in all areas. So what? If I
needed something that wasn't provided for the Mac, I would get whatever
it took to get it.


> >In the wintel world, not only are the mfg's in trouble, the dealer
> >channel is also in trouble. Service is the ONLY profit center left.
> >Dell has literally driven all the profit out of hardware. I watch
>
> This is how the Mac user sees it: greater efficiency from economy of
> scale and distribution plus better deals for the consumer = BAD! Boy,
> Jobs has you idiots well-trained. You see, in the Mac world
> inefficient companies charging high margins to a captive (and
> shrinking) market is (cue inmate Martha Stewart) A GOOD THING.

In the short term, you are correct, it is a better deal for the
consumer. In the long term, the lack of a strong dealer channel is a
distinct disadvantage. MOST users are not geeks or engineers, they
just want to use what they bought. The dealer channel is where they
got the repairs in a timely manner, the training so that they could use
it efficiently and the advice for buying their next one.

Where will they get their repairs now? For consumer boxes from HP (the
Pavilion and Presario), after 8/1 they will have to hope that some one
from the 40 service places nationwide is close enough to provide that.
Unfortunately, not everyone lives in the places those 40 places are.

But my comments concerning this were not from the Mac user viewpoint,
it was from a PC Value Added Reseller viewpoint, because that is what I
am. And strangely, many more companies such as IBM and other large
service and software providers are looking for partners because those
big companies cannot service the small business or home market
effectively.

But I see from your comments that you fully bought into the 'new
economy' crap the dot-coms tried to peddle a few years ago. Wait until
it is YOUR industry that gets hit with it.

Lloyd

"Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message >
> > But I think the real wildcard is Linux. Maybe Apple can survive
> > indefinitely as a distant second -- but what about as a 3rd? Linux is
> > gaining mindshare as the main Windows-alternative OS (witness the German
> > city of Munich deciding to switch to Linux -- not Mac -- for 14,000
desktop
> > computers. BTW, Munich has enough bureaucrats to need 14 THOUSAND
> > desktops?!? Now *that's* scary). And, of course, Linux has a great
deal of
> > mindshare in one of Apple's traditional bastions (namely universities).
> > Plus, of course, it is possible to dual-boot Linux with Windows on the
same
> > machine and even run many Windows apps at near native speeds with the
> > Codeweavers stuff.
>
> GNU/Linux is great. More power to them. OS X, being a full BSD Unix
> with GNU tools, is like a stepbrother to Linux. An older stepbrother.
> That's not out on the street panhandling...
>

That seems to have become the new party line in the Mac community -- Linux
isn't threatening because OSX is also Unix based so they're sort of like
brothers ... and then I kind of lose the logic there. The Unix similarity
of Linux and Solaris didn't prevent Linux from being threatening to Sun --
quite the reverse.

If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government decision,
what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings of
XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American) system
and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution. With
Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform. With
Mac, both hardware and software are proprietary. This is, in fact, central
to Apple's strategy -- tight integration enabled by owning design of the
whole shebang, but it runs completely counter to what the customer was
looking for. From this perspective, Apple is MS's little brother -- another
American company selling expensive, proprietary systems (even more expensive
and proprietary than Wintel).

>
> I get (roughly) COGS of $400:
>
> G5 CPU: $200
> M/B (w/ integrated DX9-level graphics): 50
> PC-3200 RAM: 50
> HD: 50
> CD: 20
> Case & stuff: 30
>
> $50 for SG&A, $50 for R&D, retail for $500.
>
> If I had my druthers, I'd make this a minicube:
>

You didn't leave much room for...um...profit.

>
> Sure. Everybody likes to think they're saving money. But since the
> clone makers were getting actual Apple boards, buyers weren't really
> settling for less, AFAIK.
>

I don't remember whether the actual selling prices were lower, but I believe
there was more bang for the buck with the clones. Which was the problem.

> You are correct though that the mass market generally makes
> un-informed buying decisions, making claims of "integration" a tough
> sell if it costs a penny more.
>

So are you suggesting that charging any premium for integration will only
work for a small percentage of the market? If that's true, then the
prospects of Apple expanding their share with the tight integration strategy
are not very great.

>
> I can turn on my closed PowerBook by touching my LCD monitor's
> surface-mount powerbutton. I paid, what, $5 or more for this feature.
> Windows people don't even know they're missing it, but it's certainly
> worth the cost to me.
>

But that little bit of integration cost a lot more than that -- yes, I have
to turn on my machine and my LCD monitor separately, but I bought a Dell
2000FP (20" 1600x1200 LCD) for $750 a few months ago. The comparable Apple
display is $1299 with only a 1-year warranty (the warranty on my Dell is 3
years). The expense of the tight integration lies in having to deal with a
single vendor for everything.

>
> Sony OEM'ing an x86 OS X box would be sweet. Weird, but sweet.
>
> > Any other software vendor with well-reguarded applications like
> > Apple's iTunes, iMovie, and iPhoto would definitely be selling Windows
> > versions. But Apple won't do it (except maybe iTunes to support MP3
player
> > sales).
>
> Apple could double up its R&D teams to produce ports of these
> products, but missing the "Yellow Box" (AppKit on NT), it's probably
> not worth their time. x86 ISV's can copy this stuff just as easily as
> Apple.
>

Well, they already have -- even before Apple came out with the iLife apps
various equivalents were available on the PC platform. But the iLife apps
are well done and there is value in the Apple brand that, together, could
grab them a sizeable chunk of a large market nevertheless, no?

> Adding all the "Made for Windows XP" QA etc. just seems like a black
> hole of investment, and doesn't do anything for the relative
> competitive strength of the OS X platform.
>

Well, that's the kind of thinking that hampered IBM in the PC business for a
long time -- they were afraid offering this or that on the PC platform might
hurt the sales of their bigger iron. But their competitors had no such
qualms and IBM eventually went from owning the PC hardware business to being
a bit player. If Apple takes its current approach, you're right -- any good
ideas it comes up with will be quickly copied and somebody else (not Apple)
will profit from them in the PC market.

> > Kind of an interesting problem to imagine playing CEO of Apple. One
thing
> > I'd definitely do is bring back the cloners (while charging a
per-machine
> > license fee that meant the clones would be paying their way to support
R&D).
>
> Yes, this was Gates' original missive to Sculley and Gassee in the
> late 80's.
>
> Back in the day, Radius actually raised the bar for integration with
> their offerings, as did Pioneer (only available in Japan, alas).
>
> I just fail to see how this improves the Macintosh ecosphere, outside
> of farming risk and red ink to other companies' balance sheets.
>

It gets other organizations into the business of trying to make money by
selling Mac compatible machines. Some of them are bound to hit on niches &
strategies that Apple doesn't think of (or decides not to pursue).

>
> > I don't quite follow. But the point was that if MS had let Apple do the
GUI
> > development across the PC platform to support Word and Excel, MS never
would
> > have become the colossus in the OS market that *could* muscle anybody
> > around.
>
> Since when does MS release control of its primary API/platform?
> Since when *haven't* they muscled people around?
>

MS wasn't muscling people in the mid 80's because they were too small. Back
then, MS was the scrappy underdog to IBM.

I was talking about when MS didn't really *have* a GUI platform and was
developing one only out of necessity. How many years was it between the
release of Word for Mac and Word for Windows? I couldn't remember exactly,
so I googled for a bit of history and it appears that Windows 1.0 was
released in 11/85 but the first release of Word for Windows wasn't until
11/89 -- FOUR years after the originally scheduled date. The MS operating
system division was struggling mightily to produce a Windows robust enough
to support Word. THAT was Apple's window of opportunity to step in and be
the GUI king on x86 as well.

>
> MS was already the PC colossus with its MS-DOS monopoly. They were
> loathe to co-
> develop with IBM, and put their A-Teams on making Windows (and NT)
> OS/2 killers.
>

No, they weren't loathe to develop with IBM. They started NT / OS2 before
they partnered with IBM. At the time of the start of the partnership, IBM
was the colossus. There was no 'Wintel' -- the term then was
IBM-compatible. MS partnered with IBM because they thought that was the key
to making their new OS a success. MS didn't start out with the idea of
going it alone. MS did put their A-team on OS/2 development. But a
'B-team' engineer figured out a hack to run Windows in protected mode. MS
did realize what this could do to the OS/2 effort and they hesitated to
release it--but ultimately decided to do it. The problem with OS/2 and the
IBM partnership was the direction that IBM was pushing OS/2 (e.g. away from
compatibility / simple ports of existing Windows apps).

> >
> > But why on earth would Apple have lost in that case? Mac OS with a 90+%
> > share of the market would make Apple a much bigger company than it is
now.
>
> Perhaps. But Microsoft started NT in '87. I just don't see them
> walking away from the OS table (that they created, no less).
>

NT was originally a GUI-less network OS -- a competitor for Netware really
not Mac OS.

> > Apple would be OS / systems half of what MS is now -- which is to say
much
> > bigger and more profitable than the current Apple.
>
> But would it be *better* than what it is now?
>

Would it be better if Apple rather than MS had written the GUI OS that 90%
of computer users were now running? I'm not sure -- but I would expect a
Mac fan to think so.

> >
> > In that hypothetical scenario, Apple would have also ended up with half
MS's
> > current size & power.
>
> Perhaps. But for Apple to become Microsoft is a net loss in the end.
> All Apple needs is another million or two units sold per year, and
> they'll be wildly successful again. Whether or not this is possible is
> debatable, but Microsoft is certainly being obliging by slipping
> Longhorn out to the distant future.
>

Why, because MS won't have the equivalent of Quartz Extreme until then?
Sorry--I don't see where this is going to drive sales to the Mac platform.
AFAIK, all Apple is getting out of Quartz extreme at this point is GUI
eye-candy. Mac users may find this compelling but it's not the sort of
thing that would induce many Windows users to switch.

> > > Moving an OS soley into x86 space just seems like a disaster movie in
> > > the making. If you move into Microsoft's markets, bring your own air
> > > supply.
> > >
> >
> > No, I don't think that x86 would be a good move for Apple now. But in
the
> > mid 80's, that was what MS *wanted* Apple to do.
>
> No, Gates' 1985 memo to Sculley suggested Apple license "Macintosh
> technology", not port the Mac to x86.
>
> http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html
>

Man -- READ the memo in the link above. Gates was telling Sculley exactly
how to open up the Mac platform and *become* the industry standard. This is
dated June 1985 -- Six months BEFORE Windows 1.0 was released and 4 1/2
years before Word for Windows. And it perfectly lays out the power of
network effects in establishing a platform (without using the term). Gates
was telling Sculley how to conquer the f**king computing world, but Sculley
was too dense to understand.

>
> In 1985 they certainly wanted more high-end PC's to move their GUI
> apps onto, that's for sure. I think this motivation decreased, as
> Chicago approached.
>

Chicago was the code name for Windows 95. That was 10 years after the memo.

>
> I think Apple has the right balance now -- Open Firmware, Ultra ATA,
> AGP 8x, Serial ATA, USB 2.0, PCI-X, IEEE-1394, 802.11, PC-3200,
> Hypertransport -- that's some serious leverage of standards. The only
> thing "proprietary" these days is the PPC and the Elastic I/O FSB. Not
> bad.
>

Borrowing hardware standards from the PC platform (and reducing the number
of proprietary bits) has been a smart move, I agree.

>
> > In any case, USB only languished unused until MS got around to providing
> > full support in Windows. Once there was a critical mass of Wintel
machines
> > with hardware and OS software supporting USB, the peripheral
manufacturers
> > got on board.
>
> With bondi-blue peripherals in late '98. Odd that. I actually went to
> CompUSA when the iMacs came out, to buy a real mouse for my Mom's new
> iMac -- and there were *NO* USB mice available then. Who needed a USB
> mouse when the machine already had a dedicated mouse port?
>

Quite. I'm still running PS/2 mice because that's what my KVM supports.
Can't quite see the disadvantage (except not being able to plug/unplug while
the machine is on--but who cares). But USB is good for printers, scanners,
digital cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, etc.

>
> The numbers tell the story:
>
> 1Q00 (Apple's best quarter ever) vs. 2Q03:
> US unit sales down 47%
> EU unit sales down 54%
> JP unit sales down 55%
>
> 2000 vs 2003 unit sales:
> PowerMac: 355k vs 156k
> PowerBook: 84k vs 166k
> iMac: 702k vs 256k
> iBook: 236k vs 133k
>

Yow, I didn't realize it was that bad -- sales of everything except the
PowerBook have all but evaporated. Man, Apple's management must be doing
something right to make a profit with that kind of decline in volume ;)

Mark

In article <Z3CdnV3Jy_lgK5OiXTWJjQ[at]comcast.com>,
"Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote:

> "Heywood Mogroot" <imouttahere[at]mac.com> wrote in message >
> > > But I think the real wildcard is Linux. Maybe Apple can survive
> > > indefinitely as a distant second -- but what about as a 3rd? Linux is
> > > gaining mindshare as the main Windows-alternative OS (witness the German
> > > city of Munich deciding to switch to Linux -- not Mac -- for 14,000
> desktop
> > > computers. BTW, Munich has enough bureaucrats to need 14 THOUSAND
> > > desktops?!? Now *that's* scary). And, of course, Linux has a great
> deal of
> > > mindshare in one of Apple's traditional bastions (namely universities).
> > > Plus, of course, it is possible to dual-boot Linux with Windows on the
> same
> > > machine and even run many Windows apps at near native speeds with the
> > > Codeweavers stuff.
> >
> > GNU/Linux is great. More power to them. OS X, being a full BSD Unix
> > with GNU tools, is like a stepbrother to Linux. An older stepbrother.
> > That's not out on the street panhandling...
> >
>
> That seems to have become the new party line in the Mac community -- Linux
> isn't threatening because OSX is also Unix based so they're sort of like
> brothers ... and then I kind of lose the logic there. The Unix similarity
> of Linux and Solaris didn't prevent Linux from being threatening to Sun --
> quite the reverse.
>
> If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government decision,
> what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings of
> XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American) system
> and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution. With
> Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform. With
> Mac, both hardware and software are proprietary. This is, in fact, central
> to Apple's strategy -- tight integration enabled by owning design of the
> whole shebang, but it runs completely counter to what the customer was
> looking for. From this perspective, Apple is MS's little brother -- another
> American company selling expensive, proprietary systems (even more expensive
> and proprietary than Wintel).
>
> >
> > I get (roughly) COGS of $400:
> >
> > G5 CPU: $200
> > M/B (w/ integrated DX9-level graphics): 50
> > PC-3200 RAM: 50
> > HD: 50
> > CD: 20
> > Case & stuff: 30
> >
> > $50 for SG&A, $50 for R&D, retail for $500.
> >
> > If I had my druthers, I'd make this a minicube:
> >
>
> You didn't leave much room for...um...profit.

Or labor. Or overhead. Or marketing expense. Or packaging. Or retailer
markup.

Not to mention that the above prices are all fictitious. Nor that Apple
wouldn't ever put their name on a system with a $30 crapware case, just
as one example.

Let's look at it realistically. Apple sells the eMac for $799 - for the
low end. Their overall margins are 25%, but considerably lower than that
for the entry level system. If the margins on the entry level eMac are
12.5% (which is probably optimistic), then the _direct_ cost is $700.

His hypothetical G5 isn't going to be significantly less expensive to
make except for perhaps $100 to take out the monitor and reduce the
power supply size. Call it $600 cost.

Now, they have to cover overheads and make a profit. If it's going to
sell through retail, you have to have a markup, too.

Bottom line, I can't see Apple making a system significantly below the
current $799 price point without severely cramping quality - which is
something they won't do.

And that doesn't even consider the amount of $1999 G5 tower business
they'd lose if they introduced a $799 G5 model.

> If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government decision,
> what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings of
> XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American) system
> and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution. With
> Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform. With
> Mac, both hardware and software are proprietary.

It's odd - I know this is the "party line" on Macintoshes from the
"openness uber alles crowd", as well, but I have never understood
precisely why, either.

What part of the hardware is proprietary? ADC? Nope, Formac puts it on
its monitors. The PowerPC itself? Nope, there's even an open platform
spec on it (if a bit dated) - POP/OpenPPC. I know there's a guy who used
to claim that Apple put custom ASICs on their machines that had to be
present to use OS X - but that's false, because OS X runs on top of Open
Firmware, and can boot from ANY PowerPC platform. The fact that there
aren't many PowerPC platforms to choose from out there, doesn't mean
that PowerPC itself is proprietary... in fact, the only other 'major'
vendor is probably the Amiga.

Then we turn to the OS. The underpinnings, Darwin, are open source. The
only part that's proprietary per se is Aqua - and even much of that is
based on NeXTStep, which was open for a while. (That's exactly why some
of the old NeXT programmers could get cooking with Cocoa very quickly.)

Some people seem to think you can only run OS X on a Macintosh, or only
an Apple Macintosh will run OS X. In fact, even the latter is not
totally true, although there is a non-enforceable clause in the EULA
which at least theoretically poses legal jeopardy if it is run on non
"Apple branded" hardware. I say theoretically because the consensus of
many is no court could enforce it.

"Seeker1" <seeker1[at]mac.com> wrote in message
news:seeker1-54021E.10251211072003[at]news.comcast.giganews.com...
> > If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government
decision,
> > what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings
of
> > XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American)
system
> > and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution.
With
> > Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform.
With
> > Mac, both hardware and software are proprietary.
>
> It's odd - I know this is the "party line" on Macintoshes from the
> "openness uber alles crowd", as well, but I have never understood
> precisely why, either.
>
> What part of the hardware is proprietary?

The ROMs which are required to run OSX are proprietary, no? So nobody but
Apple can build a machine that will run OSX (not counting those screwdriver
shops that put Mac bits into a custom case). So, because nobody but Apple
can build and sell a machine that runs OSX, the Mac hardware platform is
*effectively* closed regardless of how many standardized parts are in there
inside the case.

>
> Then we turn to the OS. The underpinnings, Darwin, are open source. The
> only part that's proprietary per se is Aqua - and even much of that is
> based on NeXTStep, which was open for a while. (That's exactly why some
> of the old NeXT programmers could get cooking with Cocoa very quickly.)
>

Again, if you write to the Carbon or Cocoa APIs, the only machines in the
world that can run your apps are Macs with OSX. Those APIs are not
supported on anything else. So again, effectively closed despite having
open components in there.

> Some people seem to think you can only run OS X on a Macintosh, or only
> an Apple Macintosh will run OS X.

And where can you buy a non-Apple machine that runs OSX? (One that isn't
build from scrounged leftover apple parts)?

> In fact, even the latter is not
> totally true, although there is a non-enforceable clause in the EULA
> which at least theoretically poses legal jeopardy if it is run on non
> "Apple branded" hardware. I say theoretically because the consensus of
> many is no court could enforce it.

It is obviously Apple's current intent not to support OSX on anything but
Apple hardware (and, indeed they might take legal action if anybody tried to
do this on a large scale). So the fact that one might be able to
theoretically manage it has no effect on the marketplace.

Mark

Lloyd Parsons wrote in <100720032240388331%lloydparsons[at]mac.com>:

<snip arguments in which Lloyd says variety doesn't matter because he
doesn't want any>

>> Oh, and then there's entertainment software (assuming staring at
>> the Beach Ball of Doom isn't entertainment enough for you folks).
>>
>I've never seen that beachball and I use a game console for gaming.
>
>All other forms of electronic entertainment are better served on my
>Mac, IMHO.

What forms of electronic entertainment would you be referring to?

>> What was that you were saying about variety? Oh, right. You
>> conspicuously avoided it, instead trying to make a virtue of
>> necessity. Somehow the lack of software choices on the Mac is a
>> bonus! ROTFL
>>
>There is plenty of variety, just not in all areas.

This really says it all. Well done, Lloyd.

Edward Dodge wrote in <m1fzle5asr.fsf[at]g3.com>:

>Steve Hanson <icustomercare[at]usps.com> writes:
>
>> wheat wrote in <bek00a$b1$1[at]geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>:
>>
>> >Steve Hanson wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> >> Grab a mirror.
>> >
>> >I know! What is with these fools? Just the other day I stood in a
>> >parking lot shaking my head at some poor sucker driving a Porsche.
>> >I
>>
>> Look, a car analogy. He's either never posted to Usenet before or
>> he doesn't realize how boring he is.
>
>College chemistry was boring too, but that didn't change the fact that
>it was good knowledge.

You didn't get the reference. You've posted on Usenet before, though,
so that makes you b).

> The ROMs which are required to run OSX are proprietary, no?

No.

OS X runs on top of Open Firmware.

http://playground.sun.com/1275/home.html
http://www.openfirmware.org/

Note that the word "machine independent" occurs several times.

> So nobody but
> Apple can build a machine that will run OSX (not counting those screwdriver
> shops that put Mac bits into a custom case).

I would counter you can buy some right here:

http://www.openppc.org/vendors.html

> So, because nobody but Apple
> can build and sell a machine that runs OSX, the Mac hardware platform is
> *effectively* closed regardless of how many standardized parts are in there
> inside the case.

I think right now the only barrier is legal, not technical.

The proof is OS X running in Mac-on-Linux on non-Apple PPC hardware.

Mac-on-Linux can boot OS X.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2002/09/07/mol/

Mac-on-Linux runs on the Amiga.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/07/05/0626205.shtml?tid=138

Ergo, you can boot OS X on an Amiga. (Again, I am speaking technically,
not legally.)

> Again, if you write to the Carbon or Cocoa APIs, the only machines in the
> world that can run your apps are Macs with OSX. Those APIs are not
> supported on anything else.

SOME Cocoa applications may run quite well here:

http://www.gnustep.org/

> And where can you buy a non-Apple machine that runs OSX? (One that isn't
> build from scrounged leftover apple parts)?

http://www.amiga.com/

> It is obviously Apple's current intent not to support OSX on anything but
> Apple hardware (and, indeed they might take legal action if anybody tried to
> do this on a large scale).

I agree with both points - with "current" being the word I would
emphasize. I do not believe they would have gone with Open Firmware if
the word "current" was in fact the word "permanent".

> So the fact that one might be able to
> theoretically manage it has no effect on the marketplace.

Well, I'm not arguing effects on the marketplace. I am arguing technical
possibility. I think the case is clear.

The technical possibility suggests the legal barrier might be lifted
when the time is right.

I offer only as food for thought.

Steve Hanson wrote:

> Edward Dodge wrote in <m1fzle5asr.fsf[at]g3.com>:
>
>
>>Steve Hanson <icustomercare[at]usps.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>>wheat wrote in <bek00a$b1$1[at]geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Steve Hanson wrote:
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>
>>>>>Grab a mirror.
>>>>
>>>>I know! What is with these fools? Just the other day I stood in a
>>>>parking lot shaking my head at some poor sucker driving a Porsche.
>>>>I
>>>
>>>Look, a car analogy. He's either never posted to Usenet before or
>>>he doesn't realize how boring he is.
>>
>>College chemistry was boring too, but that didn't change the fact that
>>it was good knowledge.
>
>
> You didn't get the reference. You've posted on Usenet before, though,
> so that makes you b).

Your reading comprrehension problem is showing again. "He" originally referred
to wheat.

--
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed... oh wait, he does.

"Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote in message news:<ciidnfKtFcnMTZOiXTWJjw[at]comcast.com>...
> "Seeker1" <seeker1[at]mac.com> wrote in message
> news:seeker1-54021E.10251211072003[at]news.comcast.giganews.com...
> > > If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government
> decision,
> > > what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings
> of
> > > XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American)
> system
> > > and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution.
> With
> > > Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform.
> With
> > > Mac, both hardware and software are proprietary.
> >
> > It's odd - I know this is the "party line" on Macintoshes from the
> > "openness uber alles crowd", as well, but I have never understood
> > precisely why, either.
> >
> > What part of the hardware is proprietary?
>
> The ROMs which are required to run OSX are proprietary, no?

There are no ROMs per se anymore, but there is a boot room.

It's safe to say OS X is a closed, proprietary platform, even if PPC &
Darwin aren't.

Certainly no shop is going to be around long trying to sell
Mac-compatible systems.

> So the fact that one might be able to
> theoretically manage it has no effect on the marketplace.

Yes. It's important to talk about realities and not theoreticals.

=Heywood=

In article <ciidnfKtFcnMTZOiXTWJjw[at]comcast.com>,
"Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote:

> "Seeker1" <seeker1[at]mac.com> wrote in message
> news:seeker1-54021E.10251211072003[at]news.comcast.giganews.com...
> > > If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government
> decision,
> > > what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings
> of
> > > XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American)
> system
> > > and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution.
> With
> > > Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform.
> With
> > > Mac, both hardware and software are proprietary.
> >
> > It's odd - I know this is the "party line" on Macintoshes from the
> > "openness uber alles crowd", as well, but I have never understood
> > precisely why, either.
> >
> > What part of the hardware is proprietary?
>
> The ROMs which are required to run OSX are proprietary, no? So nobody but
> Apple can build a machine that will run OSX (not counting those screwdriver
> shops that put Mac bits into a custom case). So, because nobody but Apple
> can build and sell a machine that runs OSX, the Mac hardware platform is
> *effectively* closed regardless of how many standardized parts are in there
> inside the case.

I don't think the ROMs have been necessary since about 1997. You do need
firmware, but that's Open.

> >
> > Then we turn to the OS. The underpinnings, Darwin, are open source. The
> > only part that's proprietary per se is Aqua - and even much of that is
> > based on NeXTStep, which was open for a while. (That's exactly why some
> > of the old NeXT programmers could get cooking with Cocoa very quickly.)
> >
>
> Again, if you write to the Carbon or Cocoa APIs, the only machines in the
> world that can run your apps are Macs with OSX. Those APIs are not
> supported on anything else. So again, effectively closed despite having
> open components in there.

You're confusing hardware with the ability to run a particular
application.

>
> > Some people seem to think you can only run OS X on a Macintosh, or only
> > an Apple Macintosh will run OS X.
>
> And where can you buy a non-Apple machine that runs OSX? (One that isn't
> build from scrounged leftover apple parts)?

The fact that no one has done it doesn't mean it's not possible.

>
> > In fact, even the latter is not
> > totally true, although there is a non-enforceable clause in the EULA
> > which at least theoretically poses legal jeopardy if it is run on non
> > "Apple branded" hardware. I say theoretically because the consensus of
> > many is no court could enforce it.
>
> It is obviously Apple's current intent not to support OSX on anything but
> Apple hardware (and, indeed they might take legal action if anybody tried to
> do this on a large scale). So the fact that one might be able to
> theoretically manage it has no effect on the marketplace.

It doesn't have to have any effect on the market place.

His comment is correct. The hardware isn't particularly proprietary, nor
is the core of the OS.

> It's safe to say OS X is a closed, proprietary platform, even if PPC &
> Darwin aren't.

I agree, or at least at this moment Apple Legal does. They have never
given legal permission to run it on any non-Apple hardware. I assume GVS
gets away with it since it's still an Apple motherboard.

> Certainly no shop is going to be around long trying to sell
> Mac-compatible systems.

I think the main problem Core Computer ran into (other than the fact
that they seemed totally unprepared to meet demand), was that they used
service parts for non-service purposes.

Again, perhaps this is only a theoretical statement, but AFAICS Apple
would have allowed Core to continue if Core used non-service parts for
their machines. (The problem is getting Apple motherboards from any
source other than those who sell them as service parts - I'm not sure if
there is an easy way to do that, other than to get them used.) The issue
was not that Apple refused Core's chance to sell Mac-compatible systems,
but that they were using service parts for a non-service business,
without being an authorized service center.

> > So the fact that one might be able to
> > theoretically manage it has no effect on the marketplace.
>
> Yes. It's important to talk about realities and not theoreticals.

It is reality that you can run OS X on non-Apple hardware.
It is reality that the Apple hardware isn't proprietary.
It is reality that the only part of the OS which is proprietary is still
partially code-compatible with GNUStep.

That means that right now in the real world, you can run some
applications written for Cocoa on a GNUStep-LinuxPPC machine, and run OS
X itself within/on a Linux PPC machine. In neither case, using Apple
hardware. (I've seen evidence for both claims.)

That nobody's capitalizing on these potentials in the major marketplace
doesn't mean users can't do it. That's real, not theoretical.

People also say you can't build your own Macintosh. That statement is
false. In a real, not a theoretical, sense.

BTW, Apple is actually going to for the first time restrict alternative
OSen on its hardware - theoretically speaking. In the published specs,
they state that you have to run OS X on the G5 in order to control the
fan/cooling system. That doesn't rule out that fan control couldn't be
added to Linux, NetBSD, or anything else you want to run on a G5,
however.

"Mark Weaver" <weaver[at]nospam-corvusdev.com> wrote in message news:<Z3CdnV3Jy_lgK5OiXTWJjQ[at]comcast.com>...
> > GNU/Linux is great. More power to them. OS X, being a full BSD Unix
> > with GNU tools, is like a stepbrother to Linux. An older stepbrother.
> > That's not out on the street panhandling...
> >
>
> That seems to have become the new party line in the Mac community -- Linux
> isn't threatening because OSX is also Unix based so they're sort of like
> brothers ... and then I kind of lose the logic there. The Unix similarity
> of Linux and Solaris didn't prevent Linux from being threatening to Sun --
> quite the reverse.

OS X already has Wintel beating down on it, day in and day out. Linux
is just part of the noise, at least until it gains a desktop
environment easier to use than OS X. Not happening any time soon.

> If you read the articles about the recent Munich city government decision,
> what officials rejected in MS's case was not the non-Unix underpinnings of
> XP but rather they were rejecting a closed, proprietary (American) system
> and embracing an open-source (European -- SUSE) Linux distribution.

Ironically, that was part of Gates' letter to Sculley, 18 years ago!
Personally, I'm all for foreign states eschewing US-built proprietary
solutions like MS and Apple -- from your genetics analogy,
monocultures are bad, and other nations should be working on their own
home-grown IT technology, not receiving it in a shrinkwrapped box on a
UPS plane.

Linux provides the common foundation for people all over the world to
share the burden of this development.

Maybe at this point Apple should look at doing the same, with Aqua &
AppKit. It would be a great way to stretch out its $400M/yr R&D
budget, that's for sure.

The best sample code is the actual apps that are running on the
system. Some apps need to remain binary-only (like DVD player), but
AppKit (I refuse to use the word Cocoa) is easier to learn when you
see real apps using it.

> With
> Wintel you have a proprietary OS running on an open hardware platform. With
> Mac, both hardware

The hardware, as a whole, isn't proprietary. The PPC, Uninorth3, K2
(IO controller), and the boot ROM are, everything else isn't.

The hardware can boot other OS's, like Linux, fine.

> and software are proprietary. This is, in fact, central
> to Apple's strategy -- tight integration enabled by owning design of the
> whole shebang, but it runs completely counter to what the customer was
> looking for. From this perspective, Apple is MS's little brother -- another
> American company selling expensive, proprietary systems (even more expensive
> and proprietary than Wintel).

True enough, except that Apple spends a large part of its R&D budget
supporting, not undermining, open software standards where it can.
OpenGL, ZeroConf, MPEG-4, GNU, etc.

This is its central difference to Microsoft.

> > I get (roughly) COGS of $400:
> >
> > G5 CPU: $200
> > M/B (w/ integrated DX9-level graphics): 50
> > PC-3200 RAM: 50
> > HD: 50
> > CD: 20
> > Case & stuff: 30
> >
> > $50 for SG&A, $50 for R&D, retail for $500.
> >
> > If I had my druthers, I'd make this a minicube:
> >
>
> You didn't leave much room for...um...profit.

Apple needs regaining enthusiastic third-party support more than
boatload profits at this juncture. Selling the low-end at break-even
prices one way I can see Apple breaking back up to 5% market share
(hmmm, maybe opening a consumer finance division like GM -- 0%
interest over 3 years might be a pretty good incentive, too).

Looking at the Dell site, I see they have the 2.4GHz Dimension 2400
for $700. Maybe the $699 pricepoint is good enough for Apple, but my
mind is still drawn to Microsoft's xbox, a decent PC at a very low
pricepoint. Cheap cases don't have to look cheap.

> > Sure. Everybody likes to think they're saving money. But since the
> > clone makers were getting actual Apple boards, buyers weren't really
> > settling for less, AFAIK.
> >
>
> I don't remember whether the actual selling prices were lower, but I believe
> there was more bang for the buck with the clones. Which was the problem.

Yes, PowerComputing loved advertising the fastest PPC's it could
scrounge, even if it couldn't deliver these in any quantity.

> > You are correct though that the mass market generally makes
> > un-informed buying decisions, making claims of "integration" a tough
> > sell if it costs a penny more.
> >
>
> So are you suggesting that charging any premium for integration will only
> work for a small percentage of the market? If that's true, then the
> prospects of Apple expanding their share with the tight integration strategy
> are not very great.

Nope, especially not in these tight economic times. At the iMac's
$1299 pricepoint I can put together a kickass XP machine, which on
balance would be a superior system for most people.

> > I can turn on my closed PowerBook by touching my LCD monitor's
> > surface-mount powerbutton. I paid, what, $5 or more for this feature.
> > Windows people don't even know they're missing it, but it's certainly
> > worth the cost to me.
> >
>
> But that little bit of integration cost a lot more than that -- yes, I have
> to turn on my machine and my LCD monitor separately

-- not only that, but I can run my PowerBook when its closed, and
sleep/turn it on & off from the display.

> but I bought a Dell
> 2000FP (20" 1600x1200 LCD) for $750 a few months ago. The comparable Apple
> display is $1299 with only a 1-year warranty (the warranty on my Dell is 3
> years). The expense of the tight integration lies in having to deal with a
> single vendor for everything.

Somehow I don't think your 20" Dell LCD is of the same display quality
as the 20" ACD. At any rate the Dell display now is only $200 less
than the ACD, and if I had wanted a Dell LCD for my Mac I could have
bought a Dell LCD for my Mac. Hell, my PBG4 doesn't even have ADC
connectors, only DVI.

[ iApps on Windows]

> Well, they already have -- even before Apple came out with the iLife apps
> various equivalents were available on the PC platform. But the iLife apps
> are well done and there is value in the Apple brand that, together, could
> grab them a sizeable chunk of a large market nevertheless, no?

Apple is already doing this strategy to some extent with FileMaker.
The iApps' strengths come from their use of native API, and trying to
shoehorn this onto XP machines is several big loses for a dubious win.

Let's say that for some strange reason Apple does a bundle deal with
Dell or somebody: 12M units [at] $10 each (Dell is on pace to ship 24M
units this year).

$120M sales. This would clearly be a self-supporting enterprise, but I
don't see the logic in making the other platform more competitive.

> > Adding all the "Made for Windows XP" QA etc. just seems like a black
> > hole of investment, and doesn't do anything for the relative
> > competitive strength of the OS X platform.
> >
>
> Well, that's the kind of thinking that hampered IBM in the PC business for a
> long time -- they were afraid offering this or that on the PC platform might
> hurt the sales of their bigger iron. But their competitors had no such
> qualms and IBM eventually went from owning the PC hardware business to being
> a bit player. If Apple takes its current approach, you're right -- any good
> ideas it comes up with will be quickly copied and somebody else (not Apple)
> will profit from them in the PC market.

Apple's Curse. Still, I'd rather be a "failure" with 6B/yr in sales,
rather than a 1B/yr success. Apple's viable now. 2004 is looking very
good, w/r/t Windows.

[mac cloners]

> > Yes, this was Gates' original missive to Sculley and Gassee in the
> > late 80's.
> >
> > Back in the day, Radius actually raised the bar for integration with
> > their offerings, as did Pioneer (only available in Japan, alas).
> >
> > I just fail to see how this improves the Macintosh ecosphere, outside
> > of farming risk and red ink to other companies' balance sheets.
> >
>
> It gets other organizations into the business of trying to make money by
> selling Mac compatible machines.

Then maybe Apple needs to be more aggressive as an OEM to other
manufacturers?

> Some of them are bound to hit on niches &
> strategies that Apple doesn't think of (or decides not to pursue).

Seems like not much bang for a lot of administrative buck. Proprietary
hardware has its benefits.

> > > I don't quite follow. But the point was that if MS had let Apple do the
> GUI
> > > development across the PC platform to support Word and Excel, MS never
> would
> > > have become the colossus in the OS market that *could* muscle anybody
> > > around.
> >
> > Since when does MS release control of its primary API/platform?
> > Since when *haven't* they muscled people around?
> >
>
> MS wasn't muscling people in the mid 80's because they were too small. Back
> then, MS was the scrappy underdog to IBM.

With a total lock on the OS & associated API's. This became threatened
when DR-DOS came on the scene in 1988, and DR-DOS 5 improvements in
1990. 1990/1991 was when Microsoft instituted highly illegal
per-processor licensing and product tying (DOS & Windows).

> The MS operating
> system division was struggling mightily to produce a Windows robust enough
> to support Word. THAT was Apple's window of opportunity to step in and be
> the GUI king on x86 as well.

I fail to see how Apple code miners would succeed where Redmond was
struggling. The PC architecture was crap in the 80's, and Windows 3.0
was mostly turd polishing.

Win3/3.1 got traction /because/ it was a crap OS for crap systems.
That's what the market had already, and that's what they wanted. That
and Windows apps that sorta operated like Mac apps on their crappy
PC's.

> > MS was already the PC colossus with its MS-DOS monopoly. They were
> > loathe to co-
> > develop with IBM, and put their A-Teams on making Windows (and NT)
> > OS/2 killers.
> >
>
> No, they weren't loathe to develop with IBM. They started NT / OS2 before
> they partnered with IBM. At the time of the start of the partnership, IBM
> was the colossus. There was no 'Wintel' -- the term then was
> IBM-compatible. MS partnered with IBM because they thought that was the key
> to making their new OS a success. MS didn't start out with the idea of
> going it alone. MS did put their A-team on OS/2 development. But a
> 'B-team' engineer figured out a hack to run Windows in protected mode. MS
> did realize what this could do to the OS/2 effort and they hesitated to
> release it--but ultimately decided to do it. The problem with OS/2 and the
> IBM partnership was the direction that IBM was pushing OS/2 (e.g. away from
> compatibility / simple ports of existing Windows apps).

uhuh. An alternate history would be that Microsoft was tired of paying
royalties to IBM and decided their own OS and their own API was the
horse to back. Cannavino smelled this out as early as April 1989, when
he talked to ISV's:

" 'What is Microsoft telling you to develop software for?' Cannavino
asked. The answer was Windows, Windows, Windows." [ _The Microsoft
File_ ].

I don't really have a grip on the particulars, but I strongly suspect
they fall solidly between "Microsoft was an innocent tech company
doing its best but bad IBM wouldn't work with it" and Cannavino's
character assassination of Gates, Ballmer, and crew.

Not that I'd trust Ballmer to mow my front lawn, mind.

> > > But why on earth would Apple have lost in that case? Mac OS with a 90+%
> > > share of the market would make Apple a much bigger company than it is
> now.
> >
> > Perhaps. But Microsoft started NT in '87. I just don't see them
> > walking away from the OS table (that they created, no less).
> >
>
> NT was originally a GUI-less network OS -- a competitor for Netware really
> not Mac OS.

Sure, NT was a side project at its inception. Getting Cutler and his
team was (apparently) a fluke. I'm just putting myself in Gates &
Ballmer's shoes, knowing their anti-competitive strategizing vs
DR-DOS, Novell, Netscape. IBM falls into the same pattern here. At
best, Microsoft wanted OS/2 to stay clear of its Windows 3.0 market
segment and profit base.

> > > Apple would be OS / systems half of what MS is now -- which is to say
> much
> > > bigger and more profitable than the current Apple.
> >
> > But would it be *better* than what it is now?
> >
>
> Would it be better if Apple rather than MS had written the GUI OS that 90%
> of computer users were now running? I'm not sure -- but I would expect a
> Mac fan to think so.

? 90% of computers *are* running Apple's GUI. At the user level, the
differences are between the Chicago UI and MacOS 7.5 are trivial.

At the API level, I have usually greatly preferred the Mac API's
(there are some exceptions, but I still have nightmares selecting some
"object" into this HBLAHBLAH to get some stupid thing in Win32 to work
correctly).

Now, YellowBox on NT has potential. Still does, especially on P4 class
hw.

> > > In that hypothetical scenario, Apple would have also ended up with half
> MS's
> > > current size & power.
> >
> > Perhaps. But for Apple to become Microsoft is a net loss in the end.
> > All Apple needs is another million or two units sold per year, and
> > they'll be wildly successful again. Whether or not this is possible is
> > debatable, but Microsoft is certainly being obliging by slipping
> > Longhorn out to the distant future.
> >
>
> Why, because MS won't have the equivalent of Quartz Extreme until then?
> Sorry--I don't see where this is going to drive sales to the Mac platform.
> AFAIK, all Apple is getting out of Quartz extreme at this point is GUI
> eye-candy. Mac users may find this compelling but it's not the sort of
> thing that would induce many Windows users to switch.

QE is half of what make the iApps so clean. Microsoft is sitting on 2+
years of GUI progress, and will sit on it for a year or three more.
Meanwhile Apple is releasing yearly upgrades to OS X, with significant
innovations and bug-cleaning.

> > > > Moving an OS soley into x86 space just seems like a disaster movie in
> > > > the making. If you move into Microsoft's markets, bring your own air
> > > > supply.
> > > >
> > >
> > > No, I don't think that x86 would be a good move for Apple now. But in
> the
> > > mid 80's, that was what MS *wanted* Apple to do.
> >
> > No, Gates' 1985 memo to Sculley suggested Apple license "Macintosh
> > technology", not port the Mac to x86.
> >
> > http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html
> >
>
> Man -- READ the memo in the link above. Gates was telling Sculley exactly
> how to open up the Mac platform and *become* the industry standard.

Not *the* industry standard, but another standard. DOS would still
exist, IBM would still try its proprietary alternative. x86 OEMs are
like a cockroach you just can't kill. MS losing its $30/processor DOS
tax wouldn't be something to excite it, even with increased MacOS app
sales.

> This is
> dated June 1985 -- Six months BEFORE Windows 1.0 was released and 4 1/2
> years before Word for Windows.

June 1985 was also the absolute nadir for the Mac platform -- sales
were abysmal, hardware upgrades, other than the 512K "FatMac" were
nowhere in sight, ISV support was still tentative.

> And it perfectly lays out the power of
> network effects in establishing a platform (without using the term). Gates
> was telling Sculley how to conquer the f**king computing world, but Sculley
> was too dense to understand.

I understand that, but I fail to see how additional Mac licensees
would necessarily increase the ecosystem. We do have the mid-90's
cloning experience for reference.

Apple "just" needed to design a good mass-market mac based on x86 hw
standards where possible and halve its margins. Which it did, 5-10
years too late.

The Mac / Mac Plus was of miniscule interest to me as a home PC until
the Mac II came out. The Mac II wasn't something that an OEM could
have put together.

> > In 1985 they certainly wanted more high-end PC's to move their GUI
> > apps onto, that's for sure. I think this motivation decreased, as
> &