Posted on 04/12/2008 2:04:10 AM PDT by Swordmaker
A recent upgrade to the Mac operating system moves Apple closer to challenging Microsoft for overall computing dominance, even in the corporate market
The 20-year death grip that Microsoft has held on the core of computing is finally weakening—pried loose with just two fingers. With one finger you press "Control" and with the other you press "right arrow." Instantly you switch from a Macintosh operating system (OS) to a Microsoft Windows OS. Then, with another two-finger press, you switch back again. So as you edit family pictures, you might use Mac's iPhoto. And when you want to access your corporate e-mail, you can switch back instantly to Microsoft Exchange.
This easy toggling on an Apple computer, enabled by a feature called Spaces, was but an interesting side note to last fall's upgrade of the Mac OS. But coupled with other recent developments, the stars are aligning in a very intriguing pattern. Apple's (AAPL) recent release of a tool kit for programmers to write applications for the iPhone will be followed by the June launch of iPhone 2.0, a software upgrade geared toward business users.
Taken together, these seemingly unrelated moves are taking the outline of a full-fledged strategy. Windows users, in the very near future, will be free to switch to Apple computers and mobile devices, drawn by a widening array of Mac software, without suffering the pain of giving up critical Windows-based applications right away. The easy virtualization of two radically different operating systems on a single desktop paves a classic migration path. Business users will be tempted. Apple is positioning itself to challenge Microsoft for overall computing dominance—even in the corporate realm.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
I haven't ever had that many. My few thousand keep me pretty busy! What's your take on a network full of MacWinstations?
Just a nit, but OS/2's original problem was that IBM insisted on it being able to run on 286's. Mainframes were not a special issue for OS/2, as even Windows had to play nicely with them, and always has, with decent 3270 and 5250 emulation software.
Subsequent problems for OS/2 relate to the fact that IBM had a bunch of dunces in charge at every step of the way.
Anyone curious about how bad a job IBM did with OS/2 should read Gordon Letwin's famous usenet posting on the topic:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.ms-windows.misc/msg/d710490b745d5e5e?&hl=en
Recent versions?
Macs have supported right click via USB mice since before OS 9; when the original iMac came out in 98, it used USB and supported the right click on non-Apple input devices. It ran 8.1.
That was more than 10 years ago.
Perhaps they are using RFC compliant authentication methods like LDAP or Kerberos (not the MS-broken kind)
Crippled? You must have some info I never heard. I knew some folks with clones (Starmax for one). Having played around with their machines vs. the one I owned at the time (a Genuine Apple), I never noticed any difference at all. In fact, the Starmax machine was approximately the same speed, but seems a bit quicker.
So I’m not sure what might have been “crippled”. As I said - I found zero differences at the time... but that has been quite a few years ago.
Luckily I don't have to run this whole thing. Almost all Windows.
And since the 80s with the Apple Desktop Bus.
But there were relatively few mouse pointers for the ADB back then, compared to a wide variety of choice of mouse pointers now available for iMac and Mac Pro users. I like the “hefty” feel of the bigger Logitech and Microsoft mouse pointers and I’m seriously thinking of getting a Microsoft Natural Wireless Mouse 6000 to replace my Logitech MX500 mouse pointer.
Still, they existed, back to the Apple IIGS. Mouse options have been around, and nobody's been stuck with one button, for over 20 years.
and I bought quite a few Umax500s for clients at the time and never had an issue with bad bios chips or bad or crippled OSes.
I have a Umax S900, that, for a time, was FASTER than anything with an Apple badge on it.
No problems with bad chips or crippled OSes.
I’m seeing the BS meter start to rise on posts from the kingu quarter...
Even Logitech made (depending on what year) 50-100% of their designs in ADB as well as PS/2, serial, and bus.
In fact, some of those Logitech PC “bus” mice? Yeah, they actually WERE ADB mice. The bus card was an ADB card.
The reality is that you *knew* of few, not that there *were* few.
I still have an old three-button Logitech ADB trackball that I’d been using since... um... well, OS 7.something. I think I got it new sometime in the early 90s.
I still have an old three-button Logitech ADB trackball that I’d been using since... um... well, OS 7.something. I think I got it new sometime in the early 90s.
About the same for me. I had a Logitech “Millenium Falcon” looking trackball with my 386 PC in the early 1990s, and bought the same type trackball when I bought a Mac Performa in the mid 90s. I never did understand why Mac people were one-button people, and I never liked mice.
I use my PowerBook as a desktop most of the time, and have this same giant, silly split-key keyboard, wireless Logitech trackball, and flat screen monitor at home and office.
I’m not sure why it is that all the stuff I like seems to always be on the edge of extinction because no one else likes it. I can only conclude everyone else is weird. ;)
Nobody trades preferred stock for money after winning a suit, you just take the money.
You do if it was part of a negotiated settlement... and this was.
And there was no rumor spending after the fact it was KNOWN at the time that Apple was losing money hand over fist, their stock was in the toilet, their market share was down, and then in came MS with an infusion of cash but most importantly an agreement to keep making product for Mac. The face saving here is from you saying this was the result of a suit. Why would MS need to save face, as you point out they sold the stock at substantial profit, they rode in for the rescue and made a boat load of money on the deal, nothing there that requires face saving.
BS, Discostu. I was there and the purchase of the preferred shares was reported in the news. It was only later that the "revised" story of "rescuing a beleaguered Apple" was pushed. Microsoft did not magnanimously give Apple an infusion of cash... they bought the preferred stock as part of the negotiated settlement of the lawsuit. This is not "my saving face" but fact. If you can't believe it, here is the contract between Apple and Microsoft:
Once the ink was dry on that contract, Apple dropped its lawsuit against Microsoft, a lawsuit that was making it very uncomfortable for MS because of the close scrutiny of the Feds. Microsoft was using the release of the already developed and ready to go MS Office '97 as leverage to get Apple to capitulate on the lawsuit... but it also smacked of monopolistic practices that the Fed was already ready to bring Microsoft up on charges for. Ironically, it was not the heavy handed use of MS Office for Mac that would later became the Governments focus of Microsoft's monopolistic practices but rather the forced bundling of Internet Explorer in lieu of Netscape... which was part of the Apple/Microsoft settlement.
Apple, however, had leverage of its own to bring to bear. Apple had discovered that Microsoft had lifted code wholesale from Quicktime and incorporated it into Windows Media Player and had initiated another patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft where the damages could be in the billions of dollars. It was this lawsuit that resulted in the settlement agreements.
David Boies, attorney for the [Department of Justice], noted that John Warden, for Microsoft, had omitted to quote part of a handwritten note by Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO, in which Anderson wrote that "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million. This is very interesting news indeed, because it closes another chapter that has a hitherto secret ending in the saga of Microsoft's murky business practices. It's an interesting and little-known story. The confirmation of the payment appears to be the first hard news that Microsoft had been forced to back down in Apple's case against Microsoft . . . - i<>Graham Lea, The Register, 10/12/1998
Microsoft capitulated and signed the settlement agreements. It was in Apple's interests to accept because Apple not only got MS to continue to develop and distribute MS Office for Mac but also got the $150,000,000 AND received undisclosed royalties from the Quicktime software patents from Microsoft without going through years of litigation. Some have reported that the payments for the royalties totaled upwards of several hundred million to a billion dollars over the five year contract... and in addition, Apple gained perpetual licenses from MS for some of its software patents for no cost at all.
If you read the fine print in the contract, Apple also retained the ability to prevent the shares from being converted to common shares or even being sold over the a period of several years to guarantee Microsoft's compliance with the other agreements.
industry news reporters and commentators were aware of the background of the payment:
" Five years ago, Apple Computer announced an almost unthinkable pact with Microsoft: The software giant would continue to develop Office software for the Mac, and Apple would bundle Internet Explorer in all new machines.
In addition to the Office-Explorer trade-off, the pact called for Microsoft to purchase $150 million in Apple stock and for Apple to drop a long-standing patent lawsuit. - C-Net news, February 22, 2002
Even the US government knew about the settlement:
The judge in the anti-trust case against Microsoft commented on the linkage of the preferred stock purchase, the licensing of software patents, the agreement to continue production and development of MS Office for Mac, and Apple's cross agreement to bundle Internet Explorer with the dropping of Apple's lawsuit against Microsoft. See Page 29 of the "Findings of fact" document.
Other commentary from the computer punditry:
". . . According to common legend, Microsoft was forced to pump millions in Apple to prop up the struggling rival as an apparent competitor to fool the Feds, who were hot on its tail leading up to the monopoly trial.In addition to serving as an antitrust ruse, analysts, columnists, and sensationalists of all stripes have chimed in to add extra flourish to the legend of Apple’s rescue.
Legend Becomes Myth
As noted in Paul Thurrott's Merciless Attack on Artie MacStrawman, it is fashionable among Microsoft apologists to insist that the company bailed Apple out in an altruistic act of compassion, and that any success now enjoyed by Apple should rightfully be delivered to Microsoft in tribute.Mark Stephens, writing as Robert X Cringely, speculated that Apple made the deal to gain access to Windows code, and is secretly using the now expired cross licensing agreement to deliver the Red Box, a system for flawlessly running yesterday's Windows applications within Mac OS X, just as seamlessly as OS/2 could run Win16 and DOS programs.
Others have suggested Apple was just out of money and desperately needed Microsoft's help, ignoring the fact that Apple had just reported holding $1.2 billion in cash. Another $0.15 billion wasn't going to make any significant difference in the survival of the company.
We also already know that Microsoft isn't really compassionate, and that the Red Box isn't going to happen; it was a questionable idea ten years ago, and the concept has only grown more absurd with the passing of time . . .
. . . The 1997 agreement killed the ongoing lawsuits and conflict related to Microsoft's copyright violations, patent infringement, and stolen code. - Roughly Drafted Magazine
Which company gained from these agreements? Certainly not Microsoft. They lost. They paid. The face saving comes after the fact and appears to have been spread by "unofficial" Microsoft mouthpieces, such as Thurrott and Cringely, who toed the MS company talking point lines on many other issues.
Apple was in trouble during those years, they probably didn’t really need the cash that bad, while they were losing money they’d developed a serious war chest, but MS was threatening to pull out of making a version of Office for the Mac, there wasn’t very much productivity software for Macs at the time and if MS had pulled out there would have basically been none. That could have killed them, it’s hard to sell computers with no productivity software available. Thanks to the preferred stock MS kept making Office for Mac, and kept it a viable platform for doing stuff other than special effects.
Yes, Apple had posted a staggering $816 million loss in 1996... but by the time of the lawsuit settlement agreements and Microsoft's preferred stock purchase, Apple had returned to profitability (small, about $25 million the previous quarter, but genuine) and profits were growing. In addition, Apple had $1.2 billion in the bank in cash and another $300 million in liquid investments. Jobs had cut the product line from over 30 models down to about six, cancelled the clone agreements that were killing Apple, and put the company back onto the proper road.
Also your claim that "there wasn't much productivity software for Macs" at the time is not really true. Remember that the majority of newspapers and magazines were being produced on Macs. Certainly QuarXpress, Pagemaker, Photoshop, and a host of other "productive" software was available for the Mac. If your are just referring to word processing and office applications, Corel Wordperfect Office Suite was available for Mac as well as several other smaller competitors... although Microsoft was doing everything it could to kill them. Apple was also shipping a free version of ClarisWorks5 with all of its non-professional grade Mac Performa computers. However, Apple DID want Microsoft to continue producing Office.
Care to retract your comment that "The face saving here is from you saying this was a result of a suit" now?
What "all"? It's my experience that I have seen VMWare, Parallels, or BootCamp being used on fewer than 3% of the Macs I see. Windows is installed on probably fewer than 7% if that. If you read the Mac columns, you find that people installed them with the intent of needing them and then find more and more that it isn't necessary. Most switchers are glad to get rid of Windows... and don't want to go back.
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