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IBM's Apple Defense
Forbes magazine ^ | 10/09/2009 | Andy Greenberg

Posted on 10/10/2009 10:35:49 AM PDT by Swordmaker

Big Blue's best anti-monopoly argument could be comparing its mainframes to Macintoshes.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a 50-year-old can of legal worms: the question of whether IBM 's mainframe business, which is estimated to generate as much as a quarter of the company's revenues, represents an anti-competitive monopoly.   IBM 's ( IBM - news - people ) critics have been loud enough: The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a consortium of companies that includes Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ), Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and Red Hat ( RHT - news - people ), requested the DOJ's investigation and claims that IBM has locked its mainframe customers into an overpriced IT system where it has complete control of both hardware and software. They say this stifles competitors that offer cheaper, more flexible options.

(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS:
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1 posted on 10/10/2009 10:35:49 AM PDT by Swordmaker
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To: Swordmaker

I love my Apple products, but they have a HUGE monopoly of their products, and do everything possible to stifle competition. I have waited a long time for IBM to start flexing muscle. I am amazed IBM has allowed Google/Apple/MSFT to go so long in the Internet world without tossing mega bucks into a viable competition. Big Blue is a great American company, and I can see why the DOJ may want to go after them.


2 posted on 10/10/2009 10:39:43 AM PDT by devane617
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To: ~Kim4VRWC's~; 1234; 50mm; 6SJ7; Abundy; Action-America; acoulterfan; Aliska; altair; ...
IBM looking to Apple for defense?—PING!


Mac may save IBM's cookies Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

3 posted on 10/10/2009 10:42:32 AM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: devane617
Big Blue is a great American company

B.S.

(Ex-IBMer)

4 posted on 10/10/2009 10:43:40 AM PDT by Yossarian
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To: Swordmaker

Probably stating the obvious here but who wants to bet that Microsoft/Red Hat/Apple/Google donated waaaay more money to Obozo’s campaign than IBM?


5 posted on 10/10/2009 10:45:34 AM PDT by major_gaff (University of Parris Island, Class of '84)
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To: Yossarian
B.S.

(Ex-IBMer)

Years ago they used to have the UN flag in the lobbies.

6 posted on 10/10/2009 10:47:41 AM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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To: Swordmaker
They say this stifles competitors that offer cheaper, more flexible options.

If M$ and Apple can say this about someone else's products, they are pure sociopaths. M$ and Apple are the quintessential lock-in companies.

7 posted on 10/10/2009 10:49:39 AM PDT by ThunderSleeps (obama out now! I'll keep my money, my guns, and my freedom - you can keep the change.)
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To: Swordmaker

[full disclosure - I work for IBM but not mainframer]

No one is locked into IBM. If they wish to use other people’s products they can and may do so. In fact, I cant tell you the number of times have seen HP, SUN, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Microsoft (almost always), at a customer of IBM.

What people do not understand is that mainframes are different than servers. The OS has to be far more reliable that a simple server as they often process millions of transactions per hour. Even a small glitch in the OS or application code can cost millions of dollars in errors, system downtime, recovery and repair costs.

Further, IBM writes service level agreements to it’s customer that pays penalties if their OS or software fails to perform. Therefor, IBM does not trust nor can they guarantee products from other vendors.


8 posted on 10/10/2009 10:52:30 AM PDT by taxcontrol
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To: devane617
I love my Apple products, but they have a HUGE monopoly of their products, and do everything possible to stifle competition.

The courts have ruled in the Psystar case (the first one in Federal court in California) that it is impossible for Apple to have an abusive monopoly of their own products. A limited monopoly on thier own Trade marks, inventions, designs, and created products, is what Trade marks, copyright and patents are all about. Part of it is specifically provided for in the Constitution.

Competition is the name of the game and Apple competes against all other makers of desktop and notebook computers as well as MP3 players, networking devices, and application software by other makers.

9 posted on 10/10/2009 11:11:13 AM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: ThunderSleeps
If M$ and Apple can say this about someone else's products, they are pure sociopaths. M$ and Apple are the If M$ and Apple can say this about someone else's products, they are pure sociopaths. M$ and Apple are the quintessential lock-in companies. lock-in companies.

Re-read the article, it is not Apple that is claiming this.

"The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a consortium of companies that includes Microsoft, Google, and Red Hat, requested the DOJ's investigation..."

10 posted on 10/10/2009 11:21:55 AM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: Swordmaker
That's a fascinating article.

A couple of historical points first: IBM's mainframe business is from a bygone era. IBM established mainframes and with OS/360[1] had a remarkable system. The custom was for hardware manufacturers to supply an O/S for their equipment at the same time as the equipment was being released. The last dying gasps of this era were the Data General Eagle[2] and the IBM PC[3].

With the hardware and system software coming from the same vendor, it was an industry standard to lock in customers as much as possible. This wasn't particularly sinister at the time, because competition was wide-open.

Hardware vendor lock in was doomed with the release of Unix Version 7 in 1979. Version 7 was the first portable O/S that didn't have its own "native" hardware. It was also the first Open system in the sense that every system call was fully documented and available for developers.

The original IBM PC attempted to lock in users with PC DOS (the other two promised OSen weren't released until many months after the first PCs were being shipped and so poorly done that they never received any significant market share), but failed when they simultaneously rebranded 3rd party system software (MS DOS) and used what later became commodity hardware because the original IBM PC had completely open hardware specs a la the Apple ][.

AT & T Unix as a proprietary system has been dying a slow death for the last couple decades. It will be dead and buried whenever the current SCO/Caldera lawsuits & bankruptcy is settled. However, it lives on in that interface it used was still completely open and its intellectual offspring include Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Darwin, etc. There is much software from the 1980s that can still run on modern systems, so long as source code is available.

Unix killed off[4] nearly all of the proprietary main frame market for time-sharing. All of IBM's original competition Honeywell, GE, CDC, Burroughs, etc. are dead. This is the rough timeline of mainframe computing.

Moving forward to today, the modern mainframe is a highly parallel system. We have Beowulf Clusters, SGI Altix blades and even (gasp) Microsoft HPC 2008 running on Crays.

That means if IBM can convince the DOJ that the relevant computing market is one where it holds a minority share

I believe that to be exactly the case. I know from following the Linux Kernel Mailing List that IBM certainly contributes to mainframe support on its own machines and big iron support on Linux in general.

They are NOT the bad guys any more.

[1] Frederick Brooks, Mythical Man-Month.

[2] Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine.

[3] The IBM PC was in the unique position of having itself square in the middle of the passing of the era.

[4] With my help, I'm happy to say.

11 posted on 10/10/2009 12:05:08 PM PDT by altair (Watch your step! in Obama's America)
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To: devane617
"I have waited a long time for IBM to start flexing muscle. I am amazed IBM has allowed Google/Apple/MSFT to go so long in the Internet world without tossing mega bucks into a viable competition."

Are you freakin' kidding me? Ever hear of the IBM-PC? IBM's antics with the PS|2 (such as locking out access to the BIOS to all but anointed developers paying five-figure club dues) were far worse than anything Apple has done to maintain a semblance of order in its marketplace. Apple gives away developer tools and documentation, after all. As in, free.

I've developed for both platforms. I was there with IBM attempted to lock down the PC market with the PS|2. And I've been there throughout the Mac era and into the iPhone era. And I'm here to tell you there's no comparison. IBM was evil-- so evil that Microsoft was the windmill-tilting hero of that day. By comparison, Apple is merely controlling, motivated by their pursuit of user-interface consistency, partner protection and support-cost containment.

Meanwhile, IBM freakin' owned the PC market, and squandered it away, eventually selling its PC business to Lenovo, a company largely owned by the Chinese government.

As to the Internet, IBM never had much vision for anything but hardware. In that, they deserved their current nowhere fate.
12 posted on 10/10/2009 12:10:18 PM PDT by RightOnTheLeftCoast (Cheney/Palin 2012!)
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To: Swordmaker
My info is a few years old, but I understand it was IBM's practice to lease (retain ownership of and maintain) their mainframe products.

That is an entirely different business model than Apple's outright sales of their hardware -- with optional maintenance agreements-- or, so it seems to me...

13 posted on 10/10/2009 12:31:06 PM PDT by TXnMA ("Allah": Satan's current alias...!!)
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To: TXnMA
My info is a few years old, but I understand it was IBM's practice to lease (retain ownership of and maintain) their mainframe products.

Indeed, but that's very old. Once upon a time, only high priests of computing were allowed to even touch machines, the peons had to submit their jobs to lower ranking priests in punch card boxes.

14 posted on 10/10/2009 12:42:11 PM PDT by altair (Watch your step! in Obama's America)
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To: altair
They are NOT the bad guys any more.

The real bad guy in these particular lock-ins to IBM mainframes is generally the millions of lines of proprietary legacy spaghetti code, some of it in long forgotten computer languages, that would have to be rewritten, and retested, if the user were to migrate to these cheaper options. That is, for many organizations, a daunting task.

15 posted on 10/10/2009 1:45:12 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: Swordmaker
The real bad guy in these particular lock-ins to IBM mainframes is generally the millions of lines of proprietary legacy spaghetti code, some of it in long forgotten computer languages, that would have to be rewritten, and retested, if the user were to migrate to these cheaper options. That is, for many organizations, a daunting task. ****************************************************

If you think MVS , MVS/XA , Jes2 or Jes3 , VTAM , IMS or CICS consists of "spaghetti code" I've got a bridge to sell you ... that they are written in languages that many "programmers" would have difficulty writing in today is true ,, of course there aren't many real programmers left, most "programmers" allow programs written by real programmers to take their rough outline of what their program should do and create their work for them ... that is how you get the spaghetti created by MS and others.

That IBM "spaghetti" code was so tight that ALMOST 30 YEARS AGO I could run 1.4 million non-trivial IMS (V1.1) transactions with an average 0.3 second response time on a 3031-AP with 1 megabyte of real memory servicing 2-5,000 users simultaneously. My CSA was 96.5% after an IPL and rose to about 98.5% after 3 days ,, had to re-IPL mid week. You can't get SOLITAIRE to run on 1mb of memory thanks to MS's "expert" coding.

That is why people pay the money ,, it runs , it's tight and it keeps you in business.

16 posted on 10/10/2009 2:18:19 PM PDT by Neidermeyer
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To: TXnMA
My info is a few years old, but I understand it was IBM's practice to lease (retain ownership of and maintain) their mainframe products.

That is an entirely different business model than Apple's outright sales of their hardware -- with optional maintenance agreements-- or, so it seems to me...

The financial model for the last thirty years or more years has been
for a customer to buy the hardware outright from IBM and sell it to
a finance company and lease it back for the most profitable cash flow
and tax benefit.

17 posted on 10/10/2009 3:34:22 PM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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To: Neidermeyer; Swordmaker
S>The real bad guy in these particular lock-ins to IBM mainframes is generally the millions of lines of proprietary legacy spaghetti code, some of it in long forgotten computer languages, that would have to be rewritten, and retested, if the user were to migrate to these cheaper options. That is, for many organizations, a daunting task.

If you think MVS , MVS/XA , Jes2 or Jes3 , VTAM , IMS or CICS consists of "spaghetti code" I've got a bridge to sell you ... that they are written in languages that many "programmers" would have difficulty writing in today is true ,, of course there aren't many real programmers left, most "programmers" allow programs written by real programmers to take their rough outline of what their program should do and create their work for them ... that is how you get the spaghetti created by MS and others.

Amen

Since the days of OS/360 through z/OS of today, system code
has always been "called function" and macros in Assembler.

One would be hard pressed to call it spaghetti.

Since Linux and Java run on zSeries Mainframes
it is not cost effective to migrate to PC platforms.


18 posted on 10/10/2009 3:48:31 PM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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To: UriÂ’el-2012
Years ago they used to have the UN flag in the lobbies.

Years ago we didn't know the UN was a freak show.

19 posted on 10/10/2009 4:34:44 PM PDT by Jack Black
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To: Neidermeyer
If you think MVS , MVS/XA , Jes2 or Jes3 , VTAM , IMS or CICS consists of "spaghetti code" I've got a bridge to sell you

I'm not talking about the code contracted out to and written by IBM... I'm talking about the code written in house by customers who have built in-house of cards applications that currently run on their mainframes that only work today due to being fixed and refixed over many years ... and do mission critical work for the company. I've seen the code and many times untangled it... but there's lots out there.

The problem is re-inventing what already has been done. Some of it very elegantly, as you say, written in tight, concise code... but a lot of it was done very sloppily, sometimes calling programs as sub-routines that was written in other languages. I'm well aware that when memory was tight, you had to write really good code... today, not so much. Lot's of memory and high speed processors lets a lot of sloppy coding be written.

20 posted on 10/10/2009 5:14:26 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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