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Apple's Golden Opportunity: MacOS on the P7

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Anonymous

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Apr 6, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/6/95
to
You know, in all the prognosticating that goes on concerning the
future of the Macintosh, there's one seemingly huge fact that no one
ever considers. Mainly that the P6 represents the end of the line for
x86 hardware compatibility. There will be a point in the not so
distant future when pc users who want to upgrade to the latest and
greatest will be faced with a platform change. The way it looks now is
that mainstream personal computing will offer two choices: PowerPC or
P7. PowerPC based machines will be dominated by the MacOS with its
well established base of top notch software and Apple's solid track
record of technological innovation. The P7, on the other hand, will
offer mostly wistful promises and grand visions from Microsoft as it
attempts to lead the pc world through the transition. This alone will
erode some of Microsoft's market share, but why just concede the future
pc world (P7) to an inferior OS offered by a company that clearly
doesn't have the expertise or vision that Apple does. Now that Apple
has opened up the market to cloners it is clear that their future is in
their software and the goal should now be to get that software on as
many machines as possible.

A decision to port the MacOS to the P7 is not likely to bring
cheers from the rest of the PowerPC alliance, but Apple has to think
about number one first. They've got the best talent and the best
products and they deserve their share of the payoff. Beyond that
though let's face it, anything that can loosen Microsoft's stranglehold
on the pc world benefits everyone in the end. The question then
becomes whether Apple can muster the resources pull off such a project.
With so many things already on their plate and a six month slip on
System 8, it would appear a difficult job at best. But this is an
opportunity that will probably never be seen again and as such it
warrants special consideration. Perhaps enlisting the help of another
company. What about Hewlett Packard? IBM? or any of the corporations
perpetually rumored to be taking over Apple.

At any rate great changes are ahead in the world of personal
computers and any strategies based on the way things are or have been
are losing strategies. Let's hope Apple's business vision is as good
as the vision they've shown with their products. They've demonstrated
that they're willing to make the decisions and take the chances
necessary for survival with the PowerPC and licensing of the MacOS.
Let's see if they're willing to break out and go for it all.

Any thoughts Mr. Spindler?


-zn...@cris.com

Robert Fan

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
In <3m1oob$e...@jupiter.WichitaKS.HMPD.COM> Anonymous writes:

> You know, in all the prognosticating that goes on concerning the
>future of the Macintosh, there's one seemingly huge fact that no one
>ever considers. Mainly that the P6 represents the end of the line for
>x86 hardware compatibility. There will be a point in the not so
>distant future when pc users who want to upgrade to the latest and
>greatest will be faced with a platform change. The way it looks now is
>that mainstream personal computing will offer two choices: PowerPC or
>P7. PowerPC based machines will be dominated by the MacOS with its
>well established base of top notch software and Apple's solid track
>record of technological innovation. The P7, on the other hand, will

What do you know about Intel's plans for the P7 that we don't? If you
were Spindler, would you bet the company that Intel won't be able to
offer x86 hardware compatibility with the P7? Yes, I know that they've
indicated that the P7 will arise from their venture with HP and that
it's heavily influenced by VLIW. No, I don't think that this makes x86
hardware compatibility impossible.

>offer mostly wistful promises and grand visions from Microsoft as it
>attempts to lead the pc world through the transition. This alone will
>erode some of Microsoft's market share, but why just concede the future
>pc world (P7) to an inferior OS offered by a company that clearly
>doesn't have the expertise or vision that Apple does. Now that Apple
>has opened up the market to cloners it is clear that their future is in
>their software and the goal should now be to get that software on as
>many machines as possible.
>
> A decision to port the MacOS to the P7 is not likely to bring
>cheers from the rest of the PowerPC alliance, but Apple has to think
>about number one first. They've got the best talent and the best
>products and they deserve their share of the payoff. Beyond that
>though let's face it, anything that can loosen Microsoft's stranglehold
>on the pc world benefits everyone in the end. The question then
>becomes whether Apple can muster the resources pull off such a project.
> With so many things already on their plate and a six month slip on
>System 8, it would appear a difficult job at best. But this is an
>opportunity that will probably never be seen again and as such it
>warrants special consideration. Perhaps enlisting the help of another
>company. What about Hewlett Packard? IBM? or any of the corporations
>perpetually rumored to be taking over Apple.

The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?

Matthew Dowd

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
In article <3m3bic$h...@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> Rob...@ix.netcom.com (Robert Fan) writes:

>What do you know about Intel's plans for the P7 that we don't? If you
>were Spindler, would you bet the company that Intel won't be able to
>offer x86 hardware compatibility with the P7? Yes, I know that they've
>indicated that the P7 will arise from their venture with HP and that
>it's heavily influenced by VLIW. No, I don't think that this makes x86
>hardware compatibility impossible.

Any OS using this chip could take advantage of the x86 compatiblity making
migration even easier.

>The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
>whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
>of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?

The Mac OS will be portable with System 8 and it will be PCI based - taking
care of some of the architectural issues that a move like this would would
bring up. There would still be many issue that need to addressed but I think
this is a great idea!


Jeff Ray

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
In article <3m3bic$h...@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, Rob...@ix.netcom.com
(Robert Fan) wrote:

> The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
> whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
> of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?

"Been there, done that."

Apple ported System 7 to the 486 boxes a few years back. Showed it to the
PC clone makes to see what kind of interest would be generated. They
responded with a resounding yawn.

How much of the OS is native is a red herring. "Most" buyers don't care.
They don't care about multitasking, or memory protection, or a lot of
other concepts they don't understand. Their concerns are much more basic.

One of the most important selling points of a new system is it's
compatability with what you already have. In order to sell to a current
PC owner, a new machine must have backward compatability with his old
software, meaning DOS and Windows applications, and to a lesser extent,
compatability with his old hardware, primarily printers and monitors.
Leaving aside games, Macs pretty much have the software compatability
issue licked, since SoftWindows emulates well enough, and the DOS
compatability card will put a live 486 in the Mac. (Personally, I think
Apple ought to buy Insignia away from Microsoft, and add full-time Windows
emulation to the PowerMacs' current 68K emulation, but that idea probably
makes too much sense. Imagine being able to run Mac and Windows apps side
by side without having to dork with SoftWindows. Nope, that'd never
sell.)

That leaves hardware backwards-compatability. Current Macintoshes can use
a VGA monitor, so that's covered. Printers are a bit more difficult; the
Mac asks a lot from a printer, so it's best to buy one intended to work
with a Mac. With a little planning, though, a prospective Mac buyer can
make sure his next printer purchase does both Macs and PCs.

So Apple doesn't need to run on PC hardware to sell to current PC owners;
they need to give them backwards compatability.

What's that leave? Price and attitude. Many people say that Apple needs
to drop prices to PC levels to be competative. But the truth is that
Apple is selling every Mac they can make at the current pricing levels.
What sense does it make to drop prices? Apple needs to build more
manufacturing capacity, and then drop prices. (To this end, clone makers
do not represent lost sales for Apple. Reduced profit margin, perhaps,
but in general their contribution should be positive by increasing
Mac-compatible market share.)

That leaves attitude. Apple will never sell to the PC bigot, so they
should give up trying. The PowerMacs have legitimized the Mac as far as
being a "real" computer, able to got hold their own against the
competition. That leaves beating down the perceived disavantages of
converting from the PC platform to the Mac. If Apple marketing could do
that, they'd have good leverage into the PC upgrade market.

Just my $0.02.

********************************************************************
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Rob Kouwenberg

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
Robert Fan (Rob...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
: whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
: of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?

Golly golly ! I'd guess you have never seen MAE working ?

My tip : go for AIX apple, _with_ MAE as a distribution floppy (make that
optical -:) )

Greetz, Rob Kouwenberg
--
[ ro...@stack.urc.tue.nl,Gr.Adolfstraat86,5616BX,Eindhoven,The Netherlands ]

Damir Smitlener

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
In article <mdowd.21...@q.continuum.net>, md...@q.continuum.net
(Matthew Dowd) wrote:


[...snip...]

> The Mac OS will be portable with System 8 and it will be PCI based - taking
> care of some of the architectural issues that a move like this would would
> bring up. There would still be many issue that need to addressed but I think
> this is a great idea!

It won't be portable until System 9.

--
damir smitlener |
da...@mindspring.com |
smi...@optica.mirc.gatech.edu |

Damir Smitlener

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
In article <3m3ofl$f...@tuegate.tue.nl>, ro...@stack.urc.tue.nl (Rob
Kouwenberg) wrote:

> Robert Fan (Rob...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> : The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
> : whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
> : of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?
>
> Golly golly ! I'd guess you have never seen MAE working ?
>
> My tip : go for AIX apple, _with_ MAE as a distribution floppy (make that
> optical -:) )

While MAE is kinda cool, it's MAS you really want; MAE only runs 68k
programs, while MAS will run both 68k and PPC. Other than that nitpick,
it's an excellent idea.

Cyrus Shafai

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
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r...@xfe.dfrc.nasa.gov (Jeff Ray) writes:

>competition. That leaves beating down the perceived disavantages of
>converting from the PC platform to the Mac. If Apple marketing could do
>that, they'd have good leverage into the PC upgrade market.

The problem is that Marketing is not one of Apple's biggest strengths.


--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyrus Shafai (sha...@ee.ualberta.ca) |
Department of Electrical Engineering | "Never share a foxhole with
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada | someone braver than yourself"

Damir Smitlener

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
In article <bc-070495...@mac799.kip.apple.com>, b...@wetware.com
(monsieur HAINEUX) wrote:


[...snip...]

> Microsoft clearly did this. Windows NT is at least partly "just" a port of
> Windows 3.something to a portable source code base.
>
> What makes you think Apple can't do the same, right now?

It's a _little_ easier when your source doesn't consist of large amounts
of assembler. Assembler is not portable.

> Someone else said that "MacOS won't be portable until System 9." I don't
> know where he got his information, but I wouldn't go making any
> pronouncements like that. NO ONE can predict when the system software will
> be done or what's in it, certainly not someone who isn't actively involved
> in developing it.

That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it
is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.

monsieur HAINEUX

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Apr 7, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/7/95
to
Rob...@ix.netcom.com (Robert Fan) wrote:
| The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
| whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
| of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?

You are making the drastic assumption that native does not equal portable.

If *I* were re-writing an OS to "go native," you can bet your last nickel
that I'd make it a BIG priority to be source-level portable. So would
anyone.

Microsoft clearly did this. Windows NT is at least partly "just" a port of
Windows 3.something to a portable source code base.

What makes you think Apple can't do the same, right now?

Someone else said that "MacOS won't be portable until System 9." I don't


know where he got his information, but I wouldn't go making any
pronouncements like that. NO ONE can predict when the system software will
be done or what's in it, certainly not someone who isn't actively involved
in developing it.

bc
who, incidentally, is 100% speculating.

mpine@pb.net@204.117.211.2

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to

Actually, according to Apple, it will not go Portable till System 9/Gershwin...
Copeland is step one in providing a bootstrap and protected multi-tasking, where
as Gershwin is meant to work with CHRP so will be porttable and fully
Multi-tasking / pre-emptive.

Robert Fan

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In <bc-070495...@mac799.kip.apple.com> b...@wetware.com (monsieur
HAINEUX) writes:

>
>Rob...@ix.netcom.com (Robert Fan) wrote:
>| The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
>| whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
>| of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?
>
>You are making the drastic assumption that native does not equal portable.
>
>If *I* were re-writing an OS to "go native," you can bet your last nickel
>that I'd make it a BIG priority to be source-level portable. So would
>anyone.
>
>Microsoft clearly did this. Windows NT is at least partly "just" a port of
>Windows 3.something to a portable source code base.

No, if I have the story right, NT owes more to OS/2 than to Win31.

>What makes you think Apple can't do the same, right now?

Apple doesn't have the MacOS moving to a micro-kernal architecture until
Gershwin, I believe. What is that 1997/8?

>Someone else said that "MacOS won't be portable until System 9." I don't
>know where he got his information, but I wouldn't go making any
>pronouncements like that. NO ONE can predict when the system software will
>be done or what's in it, certainly not someone who isn't actively involved
>in developing it.

Very true, maybe Apple will stun us all. And no one would be happier than
me, I own AAPL.

Sangria

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m1oob$e...@jupiter.WichitaKS.HMPD.COM>, Anonymous says...

> You know, in all the prognosticating that goes on concerning the
>future of the Macintosh, there's one seemingly huge fact that no one
>ever considers. Mainly that the P6 represents the end of the line for
>x86 hardware compatibility.

Not quite, but let's continues with this...

>PowerPC based machines will be dominated by the MacOS with its
>well established base of top notch software and Apple's solid track
>record of technological innovation.

Oh, ok. Whatever you say...<chuckle>

> The P7, on the other hand, will

>offer mostly wistful promises and grand visions from Microsoft as it
>attempts to lead the pc world through the transition.

You are aware that P7 is made by Intel and not by MS, right?
I mean, there are other OS that can run on Intel aside from MS Windows.
I'm sure the 7+ million OS/2 users would _love_ to point this fact out
to you.

Not to mention the various flavors of UNIX users...

>This alone will
>erode some of Microsoft's market share, but why just concede the future
>pc world (P7) to an inferior OS offered by a company that clearly
>doesn't have the expertise or vision that Apple does.

Monkey muffins.

You want to spculate. Let's. You're fogetting a couple of small details.
1) by the time P7 hits the streets, the number of Win32 programs will be about
the same as Win16 program available today. Practically every major
ISV has annouced that they will port their product over to the Win32
platform within 90-days of Win95's release. And guess what, from the
looks of things (at work anyways), this is very likely.

2) Currently Windows NT is available for Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC ann Intel.
(Sparc and HP have a version but only in their labs...).

3) MS has pretty much stated (if not out loud, then definately strongly
implied) that they intend to have the Win9x line of OS merge with Windows
NT Workstation line of OS. That means, by the time P7 arrives, MS will
have an OS that can run on four different platforms natively and have
a large collection of Win32 programs that can also run on these platforms
natively.

So basically you'll have, by P7's time, an OS that can run on more
hardware, have larger software base, and provide far more features than
MacOS. And this doesn't even consider OS/2. Which is Warp is any
indication, has a really nice future ahead.

So this MacOS is the best. Apple is the only way, is total and utter
Doggy Doughnuts.

> A decision to port the MacOS to the P7 is not likely to bring
>cheers from the rest of the PowerPC alliance, but Apple has to think
>about number one first. They've got the best talent and the best
>products and they deserve their share of the payoff.

Yeah, right. Whatever...

>But this is an
>opportunity that will probably never be seen again and as such it
>warrants special consideration. Perhaps enlisting the help of another
>company. What about Hewlett Packard?

You mean the company who are now partners with Intel? Is that the
Hewlette Packard you mean?

> IBM?

Oh yeah, the company that came out with the PERP standard, which was
incompatible with the MacOS. After they and Moto entered PPC aliance.
It only took them another year to come up with the CHRP standard. Which
incidentally is also compatible with NT, UNIX, NextStep, OS/2 etc...

>or any of the corporations
>perpetually rumored to be taking over Apple.

Or maybe Novell. You know that company selling those networking
thingy that uses IPX instead of AppleTalk.

I think Apple's best bet right now is with Moto and IBM and if
past performance is any indication, Apple's in for some rough times...

-- Sang.
*****************************************************************************
* Sang K. Choe san...@inlink.com *
* http://www.inlink.com/~sangria/index.html *
*****************************************************************************


Damir Smitlener

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m54a5$g...@news.primenet.com>, eng...@primenet.com (Lawson
English) wrote:

> Damir Smitlener (da...@is.net) wrote:
> [snipt]
> : That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it


> : is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
> : highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
> : scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
> : there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
> : talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
> : it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.
>
>

> It depends. If Copland is built on OpenDoc, it is entirely possible that
> throwing lots of folks at it WILL speed it up.

[...snip...some excellent points...]

I wouldn't disagree with your ananlysis...but I haven't heard anywhere
that Copland will be built on OpenDoc. 'Course, I coulda missed that
announcement.

will simpson

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
you did miss something, try http://www.austin.apple.com/macos/macosmain.html...
its got the full info on the current and upcoming macintosh oses...

In article <damir-08049...@damir.mindspring.com>, da...@is.net
(Damir Smitlener) wrote:

--
will simpson 'In symphonies of jelly,
wb...@po.cwru.edu you play with my disease;
case school of engineering while back across your belly,
polymer sciences there crawl the dusty bees.'
computer engineering -Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

xiaofang zhao

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m1oob$e...@jupiter.WichitaKS.HMPD.COM>, <Anonymous> wrote:
> You know, in all the prognosticating that goes on concerning the
>future of the Macintosh, there's one seemingly huge fact that no one
>ever considers. Mainly that the P6 represents the end of the line for
>x86 hardware compatibility. There will be a point in the not so
>distant future when pc users who want to upgrade to the latest and
>greatest will be faced with a platform change. The way it looks now is
>that mainstream personal computing will offer two choices: PowerPC or
>P7. PowerPC based machines will be dominated by the MacOS with its

>well established base of top notch software and Apple's solid track
>record of technological innovation. The P7, on the other hand, will

>offer mostly wistful promises and grand visions from Microsoft as it
>attempts to lead the pc world through the transition. This alone will

>erode some of Microsoft's market share, but why just concede the future
>pc world (P7) to an inferior OS offered by a company that clearly
>doesn't have the expertise or vision that Apple does. Now that Apple
>has opened up the market to cloners it is clear that their future is in
>their software and the goal should now be to get that software on as
>many machines as possible.
>
> A decision to port the MacOS to the P7 is not likely to bring
>cheers from the rest of the PowerPC alliance, but Apple has to think
>about number one first. They've got the best talent and the best

Since IBM still holds illusions on OS/2, which is no threat but still a
rival to MacOS, and Motorola is porting WinNT to powerpc, I don't
see any hesitation justified to port MacOS to Intel boxes on this concern.

With the above said, I'd rather see the alliance work more concertedly
against Wintel. What a pity if Window dominates only because IBM can't
recognize the reality and work more closely with Apple.

JZ

Robert Fan

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In <mdowd.21...@q.continuum.net> md...@q.continuum.net (Matthew Dowd)
writes:

>
>In article <3m3bic$h...@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> Rob...@ix.netcom.com (Robert
Fan) writes:
>
>>What do you know about Intel's plans for the P7 that we don't? If you
>>were Spindler, would you bet the company that Intel won't be able to
>>offer x86 hardware compatibility with the P7? Yes, I know that they've
>>indicated that the P7 will arise from their venture with HP and that
>>it's heavily influenced by VLIW. No, I don't think that this makes x86
>>hardware compatibility impossible.
>
>Any OS using this chip could take advantage of the x86 compatiblity making
>migration even easier.

I'm not sure what you're point here was, but mine was in regards to the
original poster who seemed to think that the P7 would mandate a wholesale
platform shift on the part of Intel customers. I was just saying that this
wasn't necessarily a good bet.

>>The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
>>whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
>>of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?
>

>The Mac OS will be portable with System 8 and it will be PCI based - taking
>care of some of the architectural issues that a move like this would would
>bring up. There would still be many issue that need to addressed but I think
>this is a great idea!

Yes, it would be great if Apple could finally develop a robust, portable
operating system and proliferate it across multiple platform. I think this
would be a great strategy. Unfortunately, I just don't think it's feasible at
the moment.

Regards,
Robert

Robert Fan

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In <ray-070495...@bear.dfrf.nasa.gov> r...@xfe.dfrc.nasa.gov (Jeff
Ray) writes:

>
>In article <3m3bic$h...@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, Rob...@ix.netcom.com
>(Robert Fan) wrote:
>

>> The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
>> whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
>> of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?
>

>"Been there, done that."
>
>Apple ported System 7 to the 486 boxes a few years back. Showed it to the
>PC clone makes to see what kind of interest would be generated. They
>responded with a resounding yawn.

Star Trek? If those rumors were true, then Apple would have something of a
head start in porting the MacOS to the P7 (which is, I believe, what the
original poster was talking about). System 7 is a long ways from Gershwin,
however, so there's still a tremendous amount of work to do which isn't
helped by the fact that the MacOS simply wasn't designed to be portable.

>How much of the OS is native is a red herring. "Most" buyers don't care.
>They don't care about multitasking, or memory protection, or a lot of
>other concepts they don't understand. Their concerns are much more basic.

I fully agree with you here. Why else would something like Windows ever
come to dominate?

Regards,
Robert

Robert Fan

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Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In <3m3ofl$f...@tuegate.tue.nl> ro...@stack.urc.tue.nl (Rob Kouwenberg)
writes:

>
>Robert Fan (Rob...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>: The problem here is that the MacOS is not a portable operating system
>: whereas NT is. How long have they had to port to the PowerPC? How much
>: of it is native now? How many platforms is NT available on now?
>

>Golly golly ! I'd guess you have never seen MAE working ?
>
>My tip : go for AIX apple, _with_ MAE as a distribution floppy (make that
>optical -:) )
>

>Greetz, Rob Kouwenberg
>--
>[ ro...@stack.urc.tue.nl,Gr.Adolfstraat86,5616BX,Eindhoven,The Netherlands ]
>

I thought MAE was like Wabi? If I understand it correctly, it's not a port
of the OS per se. My point was the NT was a microkernal OS designed for
portability. It's availability for x86, PPC, Alpha, Mips architectures
serves as a good testament to this fact.

Regards,
Robert

Lawson English

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
Damir Smitlener (da...@is.net) wrote:
[snipt]
: That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it
: is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
: highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
: scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
: there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
: talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
: it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.


It depends. If Copland is built on OpenDoc, it is entirely possible that
throwing lots of folks at it WILL speed it up.

Why? Because the Mythical Man Month's point was that large scale,
monolithic projects like the 360 OS don't speedup well when more bodies
are thrown at the problem due to issues like training, communications, etc.

On the other hand, if you have 5 people working on an OS *part* and you
boost that to 7 people, the problems of coordination, communications,
etc, are nowhere near as big as they would be working on, say, Windows NT
if you boosted the number of folks working on a segment of code by 40%.

As long as the overall design is well thought out (remember that neither
the 360 OS *NOR* Windows NT was OOP), boosting the number of folks working
on individual sections of the OS should actually speed things up, as long
as you don't go overboard in hiring new folks.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lawson English __ __ ____ ___ ___ ____
eng...@primenet.com /__)/__) / / / / /_ /\ / /_ /
/ / \ / / / / /__ / \/ /___ /
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Fan

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In <3m71f1$q...@elaine28.Stanford.EDU> xiao...@leland.Stanford.EDU
(xiaofang zhao) writes:

>Since IBM still holds illusions on OS/2, which is no threat but still a
>rival to MacOS, and Motorola is porting WinNT to powerpc, I don't
>see any hesitation justified to port MacOS to Intel boxes on this
concern.
>
>With the above said, I'd rather see the alliance work more concertedly
>against Wintel. What a pity if Window dominates only because IBM can't
>recognize the reality and work more closely with Apple.
>
>JZ
>

You've got to look at it from IBM's viewpoint. They don't want to wrest
the OS monopoly from MS just to give it to Apple.

Regards,
Robert

Shimpei Yamashita

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <damir-07049...@damir.mindspring.com>,
Damir Smitlener <da...@is.net> wrote:
:That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it

:is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
:highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
:scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
:there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
:talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
:it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.

I thought I read somewhere that one reason it slipped was *because* they
decided to include hardware abstraction in Copland....

--
Shimpei Yamashita, Stanford University shi...@leland.stanford.edu


ALEXANDER, DYLAN FLYNN

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m756j$o...@elaine27.Stanford.EDU>, shi...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Shimpei Yamashita) writes...


I've heard the same. They had to throw people at it so that the OS would
work on the CHRP platform, something 7.5 won't do.


Dylan

Adam Nash

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
(Shimpei Yamashita) wrote:

> In article <damir-07049...@damir.mindspring.com>,
> Damir Smitlener <da...@is.net> wrote:
> :That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it
> :is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
> :highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
> :scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
> :there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
> :talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
> :it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.
>
> I thought I read somewhere that one reason it slipped was *because* they
> decided to include hardware abstraction in Copland....
>


Exactly. Copland is the real to key to the success of CHRP - the first Mac OS
that does not require a ROM, and only needs relatively small BIOS code.

-Adam

--
```
(o o)
----------------------oOO--(_)--OOo-----------------------
Adam Nash _____________
/ /|
CS 106 Section Leader /___________/ |
| o o o | /
adam...@cs.stanford.edu |___________|/
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~smashman DFOTB

Computer Science - Stanford University

xiaofang zhao

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m75o6$4...@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>,

Robert Fan <Rob...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>Since IBM still holds illusions on OS/2, which is no threat but still a
>>rival to MacOS, and Motorola is porting WinNT to powerpc, I don't
>>see any hesitation justified to port MacOS to Intel boxes on this
>concern.
>>
>>With the above said, I'd rather see the alliance work more concertedly
>>against Wintel. What a pity if Window dominates only because IBM can't
>>recognize the reality and work more closely with Apple.
>
>You've got to look at it from IBM's viewpoint. They don't want to wrest
>the OS monopoly from MS just to give it to Apple.
>
But don't they call it Taligent? (Personally, I prefer MacOS/2.)
After all, giving it to Apple is much better than watching helplessly
MS conquer the planet, in both business and emotion senses for IBM.
Moreover, imagine the crowd we have here would ever take an IBM monopoly!

JZ

David A. Kurtz

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m75o6$4...@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>, Rob...@ix.netcom.com
(Robert Fan) wrote:

> You've got to look at it from IBM's viewpoint. They don't want to wrest
> the OS monopoly from MS just to give it to Apple.


I dunno 'bout that. Seems to me, IBM stands to gain a lot more with Apple
dominating the industry than with MS. For one thing, Apple's OS runs on
IBM chips. IBM's OS/2 which (correct me if I'm wrong) only runs on Intel
chips competes directly with MS-Windows which completely dominates the
Intel-chip business already. Giving Apple an advantage might loosen MS's
hold on the Intel side of thing enough for OS/2 to get a less shaky
foothold.

--
da...@ucla.edu David A. Kurtz
^^^^
1995 NCAA Basketball Nat'l Champs -- yea. :-)
http://lightside.com/~dkurtz

Antti Tirronen

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
Re: MacOS on P7 working when P8 ships ;-)

Oh, it's so nice to have those wonderful dreams :-) ;-)
Please don't wake me up :-(

-- Antti

--

a...@megatek.com

Damir Smitlener

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <wbs2-08049...@b65248.student.cwru.edu>,
wb...@po.cwru.edu (will simpson) wrote:

> you did miss something, try
http://www.austin.apple.com/macos/macosmain.html...
> its got the full info on the current and upcoming macintosh oses...

[...snip...]

> > I wouldn't disagree with your ananlysis...but I haven't heard anywhere
> > that Copland will be built on OpenDoc. 'Course, I coulda missed that
> > announcement.

Well, according to this site it is indeed Gershwin that will be built
"from the ground up" using OpenDoc technology. This, too, suggests that
MacOS won't be portable until Gershwin (1998?)

Damir Smitlener

unread,
Apr 8, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/8/95
to
In article <3m756j$o...@elaine27.Stanford.EDU>, shi...@leland.Stanford.EDU
(Shimpei Yamashita) wrote:

> In article <damir-07049...@damir.mindspring.com>,
> Damir Smitlener <da...@is.net> wrote:
> :That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it
> :is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
> :highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
> :scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
> :there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
> :talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
> :it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.
>
> I thought I read somewhere that one reason it slipped was *because* they
> decided to include hardware abstraction in Copland....

I read that it was so they could include more preemption than was
originally planned for, so that there was a hope that Taligent environment
(not the vaporous TalOS) could possibly run on top of MacOS. I guess it
depends what you read ;-).

Christian Smith

unread,
Apr 9, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/9/95
to
In article <3m756j$o...@elaine27.Stanford.EDU>, shi...@leland.Stanford.EDU
(Shimpei Yamashita) wrote:

> In article <damir-07049...@damir.mindspring.com>,
> Damir Smitlener <da...@is.net> wrote:
> :That was me, and it's from Apple's own announcements, actually. While it
> :is entirely possible that features may move from one release to another, I
> :highly doubt Copland will get the portable, kernaled version of MacOS
> :scheduled for Gershwin since Copland has already been slipped once, and
> :there is certainly no guarantee it won't slip again. In fact, with the
> :talk going around that Apple has thrown lots more people at the project,
> :it wouldn't be a bad guess that it _will_ slip again.

Ah, I see, Apple is making Copeland on PPC "Job 1" and throwing every
available man hour at it, there for it will slip even further. Figures.



> I thought I read somewhere that one reason it slipped was *because* they
> decided to include hardware abstraction in Copland....

That, and portions of Gershwins protected memory.

---------------

Christian Smith
csm...@gmu.edu
<http://www.ido.gmu.edu/~csmith>

Microsoft Network is prohibited from redistributing this work in any
form, in whole or in part. Copyright, Christian Smith, 1995

License to distribute this post is available to Microsoft for $1000, a portion of which will be paid to GMU to purchase additional Usenet space. Posting without permission constitutes an agreement to these terms. Portions of this .sig licencsed from Joe Ragosta (doc...@interramp.com)

Roland XL. Wang

unread,
Apr 10, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/10/95
to
In article g...@news.primenet.com, eng...@primenet.com (Lawson English) writes:

>It depends. If Copland is built on OpenDoc, it is entirely possible that
>throwing lots of folks at it WILL speed it up.

OpenDoc has nothing to do with building MacOS. OpenDoc is for developing
applications.

_Roland Wang


Damir Smitlener

unread,
Apr 10, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/10/95
to

It's not exactly clear how they intend to do it, but Apple claims that
Gershwin (not Copland) will be built using OpenDoc. If MacOS really gets
kernalized, I guess everything outside the kernal could be considered
nothing more than a collection of OpenDoc applets (or whatever.)

And when we might see this mythical beast is anyone's guess.

Steve Kanefsky

unread,
Apr 10, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/10/95
to
In article <3m4ond$4...@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
Robert Fan <Rob...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>I thought MAE was like Wabi? If I understand it correctly, it's not a port
>of the OS per se. My point was the NT was a microkernal OS designed for
>portability. It's availability for x86, PPC, Alpha, Mips architectures
>serves as a good testament to this fact.

It's more like SoftWindows. It's a port of the 68k emulator and a Mac
hardware emulator to different UNIX platforms (note that they're using the
new dynamic recompilation emulator now, not the one that the PowerMacs are
currently using).

The easy way to distinguish NT from MAE is that you can compile your
application to the native platform for NT, whereas MAE can only run 68k
binaries and only under emulation.

--
Steve Kanefsky

Jonas Palm

unread,
Apr 11, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/11/95
to
In article <3m4utg$3...@thor.inlink.com>, san...@inlink.com (Sangria) wrote:

> In article <3m1oob$e...@jupiter.WichitaKS.HMPD.COM>, Anonymous says...


> >PowerPC based machines will be dominated by the MacOS with its
> >well established base of top notch software and Apple's solid track
> >record of technological innovation.
>

> Oh, ok. Whatever you say...<chuckle>
>

Actually, speaking as someone who was around when the Apple II was
hot stuff, and saw the introduction of both the IBM PC and the
Macintosh, I have to say that Apple has shown the path of personal
computing, and Microsoft et al have followed.

If Apple had continued with Apple II technology, they would have died
as CPM died, so they pretty much _had_ to lead in order to survive in
the Intel/DOS world. Why buy a minority product unless it has something
special to offer? And they've always had that.

> So basically you'll have, by P7's time, an OS that can run on more
> hardware, have larger software base, and provide far more features than
> MacOS. And this doesn't even consider OS/2. Which is Warp is any
> indication, has a really nice future ahead.

This is, of course, assuming that the MacOS has not developed by that
time, something which is clearly unreasonable.

That said, I can't really see Apple selling MacOS for PC
hardware. It probably makes sense for them to invest their resources
in developing as strong an OS/hardware combination as possible,
rather than diversifying as a pure OS-supplier.

IF that is to happen, it will probably be through the backdoor with
TalOS from Taligent. Which also has IBM and (since fairly recently) HP
behind it. HP had to buy into that company. They paid heavily.
If they didn't expect anything worthwhile to come out of Taligent,
they would never have done so.

And perhaps TalOS at that point in time would become MacOS.

There has been a couple of intersting posts here on comp.sys.powerpc
about TalOS. Check'em out.

Jonas Palm

Damir Smitlener

unread,
Apr 11, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/11/95
to
In article <Jonas.Palm-11...@fastpath-30.orgk2.lth.se>,
Jonas...@orgk3.lu.se (Jonas Palm) wrote:

> In article <3m4utg$3...@thor.inlink.com>, san...@inlink.com (Sangria) wrote:

[...snip...]

> IF that is to happen, it will probably be through the backdoor with
> TalOS from Taligent. Which also has IBM and (since fairly recently) HP
> behind it. HP had to buy into that company. They paid heavily.
> If they didn't expect anything worthwhile to come out of Taligent,
> they would never have done so.

TalOS is so far away from completion that there isn't even a projected
release date. Taligent has changed it's emphasis to the producing the
Taligent development environement, which doesn't even run on Macs, and it
won't for at least 1-3 years, depending on how late Copland will be, and
what features are moved from Gershwin to Copland.

jpi...@inet-serv.com

unread,
Apr 11, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/11/95
to
> You know, in all the prognosticating that goes on concerning the
>future of the Macintosh, there's one seemingly huge fact that no one
>ever considers. Mainly that the P6 represents the end of the line for
>x86 hardware compatibility.

Yeah, and I remember when the 386 was the end of the line too.



The P7, on the other hand, will
>offer mostly wistful promises and grand visions from Microsoft as it
>attempts to lead the pc world through the transition. This alone will
>erode some of Microsoft's market share, but why just concede the future
>pc world (P7) to an inferior OS offered by a company that clearly
>doesn't have the expertise or vision that Apple does.

Appel has vision? What happened to the first Power Book? What happened to
Newton? What happened to John Sculley? What happened to their market share?
They may have great technology but Apple does not have vision.

John Pirner

johnson s

unread,
Apr 12, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/12/95
to
xw...@wuhan.oracle.com (Roland XL. Wang) writes:

>In article g...@news.primenet.com, eng...@primenet.com (Lawson English) writes:

>>It depends. If Copland is built on OpenDoc, it is entirely possible that
>>throwing lots of folks at it WILL speed it up.

>OpenDoc has nothing to do with building MacOS. OpenDoc is for developing
>applications.

The operating system IS an application, depending on how exactly they
implement OpenDoc in Copland/Gershwin we might see MacOS resemble
something like a collection of system extensions.

S. Johnson


Paul L. Coleman

unread,
Apr 13, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/13/95
to
Jonas...@orgk3.lu.se (Jonas Palm) wrote:
>And perhaps TalOS at that point in time would become MacOS.
>
>There has been a couple of intersting posts here on comp.sys.powerpc
>about TalOS. Check'em out.
>
> Jonas Palm

Tell me if I am wrong, but I *think* I remember reading, maybe in
PC Week, that Taligent has been dropped completely. If this the case,
I am disappointed as there were many impressive features that were
supposed to be part of the OS.

Paul L. Coleman

Evan Torrie

unread,
Apr 13, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/13/95
to
da...@is.net (Damir Smitlener) writes:

>Taligent has changed it's emphasis to the producing the
>Taligent development environement, which doesn't even run on Macs

Do you mean Macs? Or MacOS?
There will be Macintosh hardware running AIX within the year.
Seems like a likely target for Commonpoint.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<A HREF="http://liber.stanford.edu/~torrie/">Evan Torrie</A>.
Stanford University, Class of 199? tor...@cs.stanford.edu (finger for PGP)
"The difference between our [Apple's] software strategy and Microsoft's
software strategy is about two weeks." - Dave Nagel, Apple VP.

Damir Smitlener

unread,
Apr 13, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/13/95
to
In article <torrie.7...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU>, tor...@cs.stanford.edu
(Evan Torrie) wrote:

> da...@is.net (Damir Smitlener) writes:
>
> >Taligent has changed it's emphasis to the producing the
> >Taligent development environement, which doesn't even run on Macs
>
> Do you mean Macs? Or MacOS?
> There will be Macintosh hardware running AIX within the year.
> Seems like a likely target for Commonpoint.

I mean MacOS.

Ted Conner

unread,
Apr 14, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/14/95
to
Anonymous wrote:
: You know, in all the prognosticating that goes on concerning the

: future of the Macintosh, there's one seemingly huge fact that no one
: ever considers. Mainly that the P6 represents the end of the line for
: x86 hardware compatibility. There will be a point in the not so

: distant future when pc users who want to upgrade to the latest and
: greatest will be faced with a platform change. The way it looks now is
: that mainstream personal computing will offer two choices: PowerPC or
: P7. PowerPC based machines will be dominated by the MacOS with its

: well established base of top notch software and Apple's solid track
: record of technological innovation. The P7, on the other hand, will

: offer mostly wistful promises and grand visions from Microsoft as it
: attempts to lead the pc world through the transition. This alone will
: erode some of Microsoft's market share, but why just concede the future
: pc world (P7) to an inferior OS offered by a company that clearly
: doesn't have the expertise or vision that Apple does. Now that Apple

: has opened up the market to cloners it is clear that their future is in
: their software and the goal should now be to get that software on as
: many machines as possible.
:
: A decision to port the MacOS to the P7 is not likely to bring

: cheers from the rest of the PowerPC alliance, but Apple has to think
: about number one first. They've got the best talent and the best
: products and they deserve their share of the payoff. Beyond that
: though let's face it, anything that can loosen Microsoft's stranglehold
: on the pc world benefits everyone in the end. The question then
: becomes whether Apple can muster the resources pull off such a project.
: With so many things already on their plate and a six month slip on
: System 8, it would appear a difficult job at best. But this is an
: opportunity that will probably never be seen again and as such it
: warrants special consideration. Perhaps enlisting the help of another
: company. What about Hewlett Packard? IBM? or any of the corporations
: perpetually rumored to be taking over Apple.
:
: At any rate great changes are ahead in the world of personal
: computers and any strategies based on the way things are or have been
: are losing strategies. Let's hope Apple's business vision is as good
: as the vision they've shown with their products. They've demonstrated
: that they're willing to make the decisions and take the chances
: necessary for survival with the PowerPC and licensing of the MacOS.
: Let's see if they're willing to break out and go for it all.

: Any thoughts Mr. Spindler?


: -zn...@cris.com

Hahahahaha the MacOS on the P7.. how lame.. I'd friggin buy an
Alpha or Cyrix or even an AMD system if it came to that.. The P7, the
VLIW processor is supposed to be 100% backward compatible with x86
programs AND programs written for the HP RISC processors.. if anything
they'll be increasing their software base.. oh joy.. we can all run HP-UX
on our home computers.. as for HP getting invloved.. I believe they
already ARE.. with Intel that is.. Do you TRULY believe that if any major
PC manufacturer saw the Macintosh as a threat that they would let it
survive? How hard would it be for IBM to simply devour Apple whole? Or
even Compaq? Buy it out and put the horrible architecture out of its
misery once and for all. But alas.. everyone is frightened Apple might
increase their marketshare from their.. what is it now? 10%? to 12%....
I'd run Linux for the P7 before I ever ran a MAcOS..

--
drs...@netcom.com

Philip Machanick

unread,
Apr 14, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/14/95
to
In article <csmith-0804...@192.0.2.1>, csm...@gmu.edu (Christian
Smith) wrote:

> Ah, I see, Apple is making Copeland on PPC "Job 1" and throwing every
> available man hour at it, there for it will slip even further. Figures.

Actually it does. See The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks.
--
Philip Machanick phi...@cs.wits.ac.za
Department of Computer Science, University of the Witwatersrand
2050 Wits, South Africa
phone 27(11)716-3309 fax 27(11)339-7965

Jim Wong

unread,
Apr 14, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/14/95
to
drs...@netcom.com (Ted Conner) writes:
>on our home computers.. as for HP getting invloved.. I believe they
>already ARE.. with Intel that is.. Do you TRULY believe that if any major
>PC manufacturer saw the Macintosh as a threat that they would let it
>survive? How hard would it be for IBM to simply devour Apple whole? Or
>even Compaq? Buy it out and put the horrible architecture out of its

How hard would it be?

From Apple's WWW server:

Net Sales - Fiscal 1993 $7.977 billion


From Compaq's:

Year Sales
1993 $7.2 billion


From Dell's:

Dell Computer is one of the top five personal computer companies
in the world, with fiscal 1994 revenues of nearly $3 billion

It looks like at least two of the major PC manufacturer's would have
some difficulty swallowing Apple whole.
--
Jim Wong (jd-...@uiuc.edu)

Joe Ragosta

unread,
Apr 14, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/14/95
to
In article <3ml7qs$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, jd-...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jim
Wong) wrote:

> From Apple's WWW server:
>
> Net Sales - Fiscal 1993 $7.977 billion
>
>
> From Compaq's:
>
> Year Sales
> 1993 $7.2 billion
>
>
> From Dell's:
>
> Dell Computer is one of the top five personal computer companies
> in the world, with fiscal 1994 revenues of nearly $3 billion
>
> It looks like at least two of the major PC manufacturer's would have
> some difficulty swallowing Apple whole.

Not to mention that Apple has about a billion $$ in cash to work with.

--
Regards, Joe Ragosta -- 100% Chemical and proud of it.

Microsoft Network is prohibited from redistributing this work in any form, in whole or in part. Copyright, Joseph Ragosta, 1995. License to distribute this post is available to Microsoft for $1000. Posting without permission constitutes an agreement to these terms. Please send notices of violation to Postm...@microsoft.com

Christopher Robato

unread,
Apr 15, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/15/95
to

Roland XL. Wang (xw...@wuhan.oracle.com) wrote:

: In article g...@news.primenet.com, eng...@primenet.com (Lawson English) writes:

: >It depends. If Copland is built on OpenDoc, it is entirely possible that
: >throwing lots of folks at it WILL speed it up.

: OpenDoc has nothing to do with building MacOS. OpenDoc is for developing
: applications.

: _Roland Wang


Actually, it will be more like SOM being used to build the new Mac Finder
interface and the OpenDOC on Copland. SOM is more on a lower level and
can be used to develop parts of the OS like the interface (OS/2's WPS is
one), whole applications, OO frameworks like Taligent, and distributed
object requesters such as those conforming to the CORBA standard. For
that a whole layer of SOM support is expected to be built on to Copland
and later to Gershwin.

Chris
cro...@kuentos.guam.net


me

unread,
Apr 17, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/17/95
to
: greatest will be faced with a platform change. The way it looks now is
: that mainstream personal computing will offer two choices: PowerPC or
: P7.

It's WAY to soon to make this statement. You may be right, but it's WAY
to soon to tell. There may not even BE a P7, for example, it's still very
experimental, Intel has not announced the product, much less a ship date.

> Hahahahaha the MacOS on the P7.. how lame.. I'd friggin buy an
>Alpha or Cyrix or even an AMD system if it came to that.. The P7, the
>VLIW processor is supposed to be 100% backward compatible with x86
>programs AND programs written for the HP RISC processors.. if anything
>they'll be increasing their software base.. oh joy.. we can all run HP-UX

>on our home computers.. as for HP getting invloved.. I believe they
>already ARE.. with Intel that is.. Do you TRULY believe that if any major
>PC manufacturer saw the Macintosh as a threat that they would let it
>survive? How hard would it be for IBM to simply devour Apple whole? Or
>even Compaq? Buy it out and put the horrible architecture out of its

>misery once and for all. But alas.. everyone is frightened Apple might
>increase their marketshare from their.. what is it now? 10%? to 12%....

Well, Ted, you should try to know a little bit about the topics you post
on. Apple is about the same size as Compaq, for example, and larger than
most of the others. IBM isn't in any position to devour ANYONE, whole or
otherwise. They are fighting for their own lives, with little time left
over to eyeball Apple. They were worried enough, after all, to form an
ALLIANCE with Apple...

Robert Cassidy

unread,
Apr 17, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/17/95
to
In article <drsoranD...@netcom.com>, drs...@netcom.com (Ted Conner)
wrote:

[snip]


> as for HP getting invloved.. I believe they
> already ARE.. with Intel that is.. Do you TRULY believe that if any major
> PC manufacturer saw the Macintosh as a threat that they would let it
> survive?

Dunno, how would they put Apple out of business?

> How hard would it be for IBM to simply devour Apple whole?

IBM, pretty hard. I don't think the Justice Dept. would be too happy with
it. Why would they want to? IBM is not exactly Apple's worst enemy these
days with all of these joint projects and whatnot. Besides, Apple would
not work too well under IBM's management style (IMO, not that it's bad,
just very different)

> Or
> even Compaq?

I don't think Compaq has the $$$ to take Apple.

> Buy it out and put the horrible architecture out of its
> misery once and for all. But alas.. everyone is frightened Apple might
> increase their marketshare from their.. what is it now? 10%? to 12%....

True. Some analysts think they could go as high as 18% in the next three
years with Pippin and CHRP and clones, others think they'll stay where
they are. Unfortunately, it seems that the horrible architecture is
holding something near 20-25% of software sales, so the market isn't
nearly so one-sided.

> I'd run Linux for the P7 before I ever ran a MAcOS..

Good, I'm sure there will be a version available. Hopefully Apple won't be
so foolish as to divert resources into that market.

--
Bob Cassidy
UC Irvine

Sangria

unread,
Apr 18, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/18/95
to
In article <rmcassid-170...@dante.eng.uci.edu>, rmca...@uci.edu says...

>> Or
>> even Compaq?
>
>I don't think Compaq has the $$$ to take Apple.

Actually a single company doesn't need that much $$$ to take over
another. If the company that wants to do the buying has enough
presence and enough banks believing it can, then they can get the
money from loans.

For example, recently some guy attempted to buy Chryseler for $23B.
He put in about $2B - $3B of his own money and got a few other to help.
But he was still way short of the $23B, and yet banks were willing
to lend him the money for the buy out since they believed he would
succeed. This was on CNN quite recently (three, four days ago?)

If a company like Compaq (who has seen tremendous growth recently)
or MS (who has market presence that any company would envy) decided
to join forces and buy Apple, there will be banks lining up to lend
them money to do so.

Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"
probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
(read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
Justice Dept. might have a say.

-- Sang.
*****************************************************************************
* Sang K. Choe san...@inlink.com *
* http://www.inlink.com/~sangria/index.html *
*****************************************************************************


Robert Cassidy

unread,
Apr 19, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/19/95
to
In article <3n0140$4...@news.inlink.com>, san...@inlink.com (Sangria) wrote:

> In article <rmcassid-170...@dante.eng.uci.edu>,
rmca...@uci.edu says...
>
> >> Or
> >> even Compaq?
> >
> >I don't think Compaq has the $$$ to take Apple.
>

[snip]


>
> For example, recently some guy attempted to buy Chryseler for $23B.
> He put in about $2B - $3B of his own money and got a few other to help.
> But he was still way short of the $23B, and yet banks were willing
> to lend him the money for the buy out since they believed he would
> succeed. This was on CNN quite recently (three, four days ago?)

You mean Lee Iacocca - the man who saved Chrysler from going bankrupt
after the government bailout in the late '70's? There aren't too many
banks that would doubt his capabilities at keeping Chrysler in the black.
You scrape up $2B and take a shot at it, see if any banks are willing to
help. ;-)

> If a company like Compaq (who has seen tremendous growth recently)
> or MS (who has market presence that any company would envy) decided
> to join forces and buy Apple, there will be banks lining up to lend
> them money to do so.
>
> Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"
> probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
> (read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
> Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
> makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
> Justice Dept. might have a say.

Compaq has seen a lot of growth lately, but Apple is still bigger, trades
off top honors in the US with Compaq and has Compaq beat hands down in
Japan. Apple is *not* a weak company. Sure, put Apple against Compaq, IBM,
Dell, AST, Gateway, and every other cloner and they look weak, but put
them up against any of them save IBM and Apple is pretty big and strong
(and wealthy - Apple keeps a lot of money laying around as you mention)

Apple's presence is well and good, thank you. They are picking up market
share, they have strong support in the software industry since Macs
account for so much software revenue, and they are improving their other
areas - eWorld and Newton divisions are making money and Newton is still a
leader.

Funny thing is, everyone yells and hollers 'We need market share' - well,
Apple has market share, as much as *any other personal computer company
out there*. Nobody is screaming about the death of Dell or SGI, both of
whom have much lower market shares. The more important issue is whether
Apple makes money or not, they do. Do people buy Macintoshes, they do. If
Apple keeps its market share, then it's selling more and more machines
every year - that's good, that's what they need to do and they are doing
it.

Damir Smitlener

unread,
Apr 19, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/19/95
to
In article <rmcassid-190...@dante.eng.uci.edu>, rmca...@uci.edu
(Robert Cassidy) wrote:

> In article <3n0140$4...@news.inlink.com>, san...@inlink.com (Sangria) wrote:
>
> > In article <rmcassid-170...@dante.eng.uci.edu>,
> rmca...@uci.edu says...

[...snip...]

> > For example, recently some guy attempted to buy Chryseler for $23B.
> > He put in about $2B - $3B of his own money and got a few other to help.
> > But he was still way short of the $23B, and yet banks were willing
> > to lend him the money for the buy out since they believed he would
> > succeed. This was on CNN quite recently (three, four days ago?)
>
> You mean Lee Iacocca - the man who saved Chrysler from going bankrupt
> after the government bailout in the late '70's? There aren't too many
> banks that would doubt his capabilities at keeping Chrysler in the black.
> You scrape up $2B and take a shot at it, see if any banks are willing to
> help. ;-)

I think he's referring to the recent (last two weeks) takeover attempt of
Chrysler; while the finances for this takeover seem to be in place, it is
not yet a done deal.

[...snip...]

Eric Sooter

unread,
Apr 20, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/20/95
to
What horrible architecture? In the MAC? You must be a masochist! The
brain-dead memory architecture of the intel based PCs is the nightmare of
any and all who have ever had any program or hardware interface that
required more than 64KB of contiguous memory. It is not supprising that the
first PC was designed not by engineers, but by marketeers. The only way it
could have been worse was if the government had funded and specified it.

References: <3m1oob$e...@jupiter.WichitaKS.HMPD.COM> <drsoranD...@netcom.com> <me-170495...@slip-1.io.com>
Organization: Florida Tech, CP/EE Dept.

In <me-170495...@slip-1.io.com> me writes:

>: greatest will be faced with a platform change. The way it looks now is

>experimental, Intel has not announced the product, much less a ship date.

>> Hahahahaha the MacOS on the P7.. how lame.. I'd friggin buy an
>>Alpha or Cyrix or even an AMD system if it came to that.. The P7, the
>>VLIW processor is supposed to be 100% backward compatible with x86
>>programs AND programs written for the HP RISC processors.. if anything
>>they'll be increasing their software base.. oh joy.. we can all run HP-UX

>>on our home computers.. as for HP getting invloved.. I believe they

>>already ARE.. with Intel that is.. Do you TRULY believe that if any major
>>PC manufacturer saw the Macintosh as a threat that they would let it

>>survive? How hard would it be for IBM to simply devour Apple whole? Or
>>even Compaq? Buy it out and put the horrible architecture out of its

>>misery once and for all. But alas.. everyone is frightened Apple might
>>increase their marketshare from their.. what is it now? 10%? to 12%....

>Well, Ted, you should try to know a little bit about the topics you post


>on. Apple is about the same size as Compaq, for example, and larger than
>most of the others. IBM isn't in any position to devour ANYONE, whole or
>otherwise. They are fighting for their own lives, with little time left
>over to eyeball Apple. They were worried enough, after all, to form an
>ALLIANCE with Apple...

--
_________________________________________________________________
regards, | I Love Animals....they taste delicious! |
eric sooter | |
eso...@ee.fit.edu | |

Christopher Robato

unread,
Apr 20, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/20/95
to
Ted Conner (drs...@netcom.com) wrote:
: Anonymous wrote:

[snip]
: :

: : At any rate great changes are ahead in the world of personal
: : computers and any strategies based on the way things are or have been
: : are losing strategies. Let's hope Apple's business vision is as good
: : as the vision they've shown with their products. They've demonstrated
: : that they're willing to make the decisions and take the chances
: : necessary for survival with the PowerPC and licensing of the MacOS.
: : Let's see if they're willing to break out and go for it all.

: : Any thoughts Mr. Spindler?


: : -zn...@cris.com


:
: Hahahahaha the MacOS on the P7.. how lame.. I'd friggin buy an

: Alpha or Cyrix or even an AMD system if it came to that.. The P7, the
: VLIW processor is supposed to be 100% backward compatible with x86
: programs AND programs written for the HP RISC processors.. if anything
: they'll be increasing their software base.. oh joy.. we can all run HP-UX
: on our home computers.. as for HP getting invloved.. I believe they
: already ARE.. with Intel that is.. Do you TRULY believe that if any major
: PC manufacturer saw the Macintosh as a threat that they would let it
: survive? How hard would it be for IBM to simply devour Apple whole? Or
: even Compaq? Buy it out and put the horrible architecture out of its
: misery once and for all. But alas.. everyone is frightened Apple might
: increase their marketshare from their.. what is it now? 10%? to 12%....

: I'd run Linux for the P7 before I ever ran a MAcOS..

: --
: drs...@netcom.com


The first poster made a rational post, and then here you go acting like a
kid and foaming in your mouth.

Can't you see how inane your post and response reads like in public?


Chris
cro...@kuentos.guam.net

Koan Kid

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to
Sangria (san...@inlink.com) spake thusly:

: If a company like Compaq (who has seen tremendous growth recently)


: or MS (who has market presence that any company would envy) decided
: to join forces and buy Apple, there will be banks lining up to lend
: them money to do so.

: Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"
: probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
: (read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
: Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
: makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
: Justice Dept. might have a say.

The strange thing about this line of reasoning is that both Apple and
Compaq have about the same market-share. Yet one is held up as a paragon
of success and the other is villified as a poor cripple on the verge
of curling up and dieing. Where's the sense in that?

And which of them is actually spending money on basic research?

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Koan Kid -=#=- e-mail: koa...@io.com -=#=- WWW: http://www.io.com/~koankid/
Illuminati Online -=#=- "Gnosis non veritas, veritae."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chad Irby

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to
Koan Kid (koa...@io.com) wrote:

: The strange thing about this line of reasoning is that both Apple and

: Compaq have about the same market-share. Yet one is held up as a paragon
: of success and the other is villified as a poor cripple on the verge
: of curling up and dieing. Where's the sense in that?

Apple stock just jumped up a dollar in response to a major earnings
increase over last year. Yep- they must be getting ready to collapse.
All of the failing companiess make lots of money...

--

Chad Irby / My greatest fear: that future generations will,
ci...@gate.net / for some reason, refer to me as an "optimist."

Roger Lo

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to
ci...@gate.net (Chad Irby) wrote:
>Koan Kid (koa...@io.com) wrote:
>
>: The strange thing about this line of reasoning is that both Apple and
>: Compaq have about the same market-share. Yet one is held up as a paragon
>: of success and the other is villified as a poor cripple on the verge
>: of curling up and dieing. Where's the sense in that?
>
>Apple stock just jumped up a dollar in response to a major earnings
>increase over last year. Yep- they must be getting ready to collapse.
>All of the failing companiess make lots of money...


I'm not sure why but this is my take on market opinion. Apple is solely
responsible for the Mac platform, which currently makes up a precarious 10% of
the entire PC market. As marketshare declines (this is the fear), developers
will move to the PC market, a market noone expects to die anytime in the
forseeable future. This can eventually lead to the complete death of the Mac
market if developers leave. The Mac market as a whole is threatened, which
causes fear about Apple's future. If it looked as if the Mac had no chance of
dying, Apple would be looked at as the most powerful company in the PC
industry. If, for instance, the Mac marketshare was around 50% (we can hope),
the Mac itself would not be in any danger. Apple, if they continued to hold
10% market share, would be considered wildly successful since they are getting
a big piece of an everlasting market (no Going Concern issue, for those
accounting guys), rather than 100% of a dying market. If marketshare continues
to drop, this currently profitable company would not survive. The securities
markets always look at the future, not what is current.

On the PC side, the market is not going away so the fight is for marketshare of
the PC market, not for survival. Since Compaq has the largest marketshare, it
is considered a successful company.


Tomer STrolight

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to

> Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"
> probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
> (read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
> Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
> makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
> Justice Dept. might have a say.
>

Two points:
1) if Apple has a lot of money lying around then someone will buy it and
use that money to pay off the purchase price (this is why many cash rich
companies are major takeover targets).

2) If any monolithic, boring company takes over Apple, all is lost. Apple
thrives on creativity and new direction. Apple does not develop a new
technology because it is strategic, they develop it because they believe
it will empower users and create a cooler computer. Am I naive. More
likely the people at Apple are. The employees I know there certainly all
believe in this ideology.

Chad Irby

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to
Roger Lo (r...@qualcomm.com) wrote:

: I'm not sure why but this is my take on market opinion. Apple is solely


: responsible for the Mac platform, which currently makes up a precarious
: 10% of the entire PC market.

Back in 1984, "the entire PC market" was indeed small. But Apple is a
multibillion dollar company with 10%+ of a *huge* market. In the
higher-end PC market (not the cheapo clone arena), Apple is closer to 20%
of units sold *and* dollars taken in. In the Pentium/PMac fight, Macs
make up nearly 1/3 of that market... Apple sold over $2 BILLION worth of
PMacs in the last nine months of 1994.

: As marketshare declines (this is the fear), developers


: will move to the PC market, a market noone expects to die anytime in the
: forseeable future. This can eventually lead to the complete death of
: the Mac market if developers leave.

Currently, Mac software sales represent nearly 30% of the market (much
higher than the hardware share). Support costs for Mac software are a
small fraction of costs in the PC arena (about 1/20 for some titles). So
overall, if a developer is smart, they'll develop packages for the Mac
market and take in a much higher profit margin on the same price level.

: On the PC side, the market is not going away so the fight is for


: marketshare of the PC market, not for survival. Since Compaq has the
: largest marketshare, it is considered a successful company.

Actually, Packard-Bell just took over the "most sold" title. And they
can have it. Ten years ago, the market leader was Commodore, and you can
see just how well that worked.

Compaq is successful because it has a lot of sales, makes a good amount
of money for every unit sold, and their products have a good reputation
for quality. As opposed to P-B, who sell more computers, make very
little money per unit sold, and have a rotten reputation for quality.

Roger Lo

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to

You could very well be right (I've seen those same statistics before), but I
suspect conventional wisdom, at least in the financial markets, is looking at
hardware market share. A lot of developers too since this is the stuff that's
being reported in the trade rags. Every PC rag that I see (I subscribe to
about five of them, PC Mag, PC World, Windows, Byte, PC Computing, plus
MacWorld and MacUser and a few technical PC/Mac journals) reports that
developers are abandoning the Mac because of declining market share.
Perception is what is important, not necessarily reality. Conventional wisdom
says that you must have more hardware market share in order to survive because
fewer machines now means fewer software sales later.


Bradley Polant - Software Engineering

unread,
Apr 21, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/21/95
to
In article <rmcassid-190...@dante.eng.uci.edu> rmca...@uci.edu (Robert Cassidy) writes:
>In article <3n0140$4...@news.inlink.com>, san...@inlink.com (Sangria) wrote:
>
>> In article <rmcassid-170...@dante.eng.uci.edu>,
>rmca...@uci.edu says...
>>
>> >> Or
>> >> even Compaq?
>> >
>> >I don't think Compaq has the $$$ to take Apple.
>>
>[snip]
>>
>> For example, recently some guy attempted to buy Chryseler for $23B.
>> He put in about $2B - $3B of his own money and got a few other to help.
>> But he was still way short of the $23B, and yet banks were willing
>> to lend him the money for the buy out since they believed he would
>> succeed. This was on CNN quite recently (three, four days ago?)
>
>You mean Lee Iacocca - the man who saved Chrysler from going bankrupt
>after the government bailout in the late '70's? There aren't too many
>banks that would doubt his capabilities at keeping Chrysler in the black.
>You scrape up $2B and take a shot at it, see if any banks are willing to
>help. ;-)
He is a junior partner. The actual buyer is Kirk Kerkorain (sp), a former
casino and airline owner. Most think this is simply greenmail.
But I digress.

>Compaq has seen a lot of growth lately, but Apple is still bigger, trades
>off top honors in the US with Compaq and has Compaq beat hands down in
>Japan. Apple is *not* a weak company. Sure, put Apple against Compaq, IBM,
>Dell, AST, Gateway, and every other cloner and they look weak, but put
>them up against any of them save IBM and Apple is pretty big and strong
>(and wealthy - Apple keeps a lot of money laying around as you mention)
>
>Apple's presence is well and good, thank you. They are picking up market
>share, they have strong support in the software industry since Macs
>account for so much software revenue, and they are improving their other
>areas - eWorld and Newton divisions are making money and Newton is still a
>leader.

I would have to say, Apple could easily be gone in five years. It is unrealistic to compare apple market share to Compaq/IBM. Instead compare Apple
share to the total PC market. Apple is ,in spite of recent changes, a hardware
company that has bundled software. The Mac OS is largely Apple only.


>
>Funny thing is, everyone yells and hollers 'We need market share' - well,
>Apple has market share, as much as *any other personal computer company
>out there*. Nobody is screaming about the death of Dell or SGI, both of
>whom have much lower market shares. The more important issue is whether

This is your flaw. Dell sells PC machines for a PC market, so they are simply
a vendor in a established field. Weather the PC/DOS/Windows/NT ship sinks
or sails has little to do with them. For apple, a drop in share means there
is less impetious for developers to make Mac software. Less Impetious will
snowball into no impetious, and the Mac could join the TRS-80 et al.
As far as SGI, SGI is a smaller firm which does one thing and one thing
well, graphics. As long as apple has a better user interface than Windows and
a corner on publishing, they will survive. If Sun had equivilant graphics
capability to SGI, SGI would be dead. Ditto for Apple.
Basicly, it is insignifcant to compare apple to Dell or Compaq, the only
comparison is the number of Mac users to Windows users, and the number of
mac users overall. If #1 falls, the PC will be port of choice. If #2 falls,
the Mac will die.
BP

Robert Cassidy

unread,
Apr 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/22/95
to
In article <1995Apr21.1...@vivitech.com>, bpo...@vivitech.com

(Bradley Polant - Software Engineering) wrote:

> In article <rmcassid-190...@dante.eng.uci.edu>
rmca...@uci.edu (Robert Cassidy) writes:

[snip]


> >Funny thing is, everyone yells and hollers 'We need market share' - well,
> >Apple has market share, as much as *any other personal computer company
> >out there*. Nobody is screaming about the death of Dell or SGI, both of
> >whom have much lower market shares. The more important issue is whether

> This is your flaw. Dell sells PC machines for a PC market, so they are simply
> a vendor in a established field. Weather the PC/DOS/Windows/NT ship sinks
> or sails has little to do with them. For apple, a drop in share means there
> is less impetious for developers to make Mac software. Less Impetious will
> snowball into no impetious, and the Mac could join the TRS-80 et al.

Granted Apple is (until May 1) the sole maintainer of the Mac market. You
claim a drop in market share means less impetus for developers to make Mac
software. Apple has today 10-12% of the market depending on who you ask.
They have never been considerably higher than that (at least never above
20%), yet they provide somewhere near 20-30% of software revenues - this
is most likely an all-time high for Mac sofware market share. So the Mac
software market is growing while the hardware market is doomed? Macintosh
has been in the 10-12% range for most of it's life - 11 years now. Why now
is it doomed, and not 2 years ago when P5 came out, or 5 years ago when
Win 2.0 came out? What is so special about today when Apple's share is
growing, clones are being released that should help improve their share
and software sales are probably the highest (as a % of share) ever?


> Basicly, it is insignifcant to compare apple to Dell or Compaq, the only
> comparison is the number of Mac users to Windows users, and the number of
> mac users overall. If #1 falls, the PC will be port of choice. If #2 falls,
> the Mac will die.

Why is it that Mac and PC seem to be redundant entities in the computing
world but Mac and Sun or PC and SGI aren't? Are Macs and PC so undeniably
similar that nobody would say 'We just *need* a Mac, the PC won't do it'
the way they now say 'This PC isn't powerful enough, we need a Sun'.
Windows has taken back some of Macintosh's advantages but I don't think
it's anywhere near making the Mac a redundent system. There are many, many
people out there using Macs that would tell you that what they are doing
on the Mac simply cannot be done on the PC - even with the upcoming Win
95. I'm one of them and I converse with many others. We will pay a premium
to help keep the Mac alive if need be, but I really don't see that that
will be necessary.

Clinton W. Pelto

unread,
Apr 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/22/95
to
In article <3na36v$k...@news.primenet.com>, eng...@primenet.com (Lawson English) says:
>
>Roger Lo (r...@qualcomm.com) wrote:
>[snipt]
>: You could very well be right (I've seen those same statistics before), but I

>: suspect conventional wisdom, at least in the financial markets, is looking at
>: hardware market share. A lot of developers too since this is the stuff that's
>: being reported in the trade rags. Every PC rag that I see (I subscribe to
>: about five of them, PC Mag, PC World, Windows, Byte, PC Computing, plus
>: MacWorld and MacUser and a few technical PC/Mac journals) reports that
>: developers are abandoning the Mac because of declining market share.
>: Perception is what is important, not necessarily reality. Conventional wisdom
>: says that you must have more hardware market share in order to survive because
>: fewer machines now means fewer software sales later.
>
>Actually, the picture is far more confusing than you guys seem to realize.
>
>Last year, Apple had perhaps its worst quarter in the past 7-8 years
>(market-share wise at least) because everyone was waiting for the
>PowerMacs (the same thing will happen this Summer as everyone waits for
>PCI macs and PCI MacOS clones). Last Christmas, Apple sold more computers
>in the US than any computer company in history.
>
>Overall, the units-selling market-share probably declined slightly last
>year. OTH, last year, the units-in-use market-share actually went up, as
>did the percentage of total-revenue-in-software market-share.
>
>
>Given the above, I think that the trend is obvious:
>
>
>There isn't one.
>
>--
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Lawson English __ __ ____ ___ ___ ____
>eng...@primenet.com /__)/__) / / / / /_ /\ / /_ /
> / / \ / / / / /__ / \/ /___ /
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is Apple so successful in market share in Japan? Could it be that it sells
there on merit only, and not being subject to preception caused by negative press.

I sat through a MS Windows95 presentation given by the company at the U of W
annual fair. My impression was that they are trying for a "better OS2 V3.0 than OS2".
The default screen was a very nice rendition of WARP and is catching up in other areas.
The presentation started with a demo on how much easier it is to find topics in their Help.
It would have been more impressive except the dementrator could not find the Help the
topic. So much for user friendlier. I have wondered what the biased Seattle papers would
have done with that one if it had happened in the IBM or Apple presentations. Which by the
way were both excelent. Of course they want to be kind to the little start up company in little
old Redmond.

I am a Windows user. I think MS puts out excellent products. It is the subjective, misleading
self full filling prophecies of the news media that bugs me. If a product isn't Windows or PC
it doesn't exist as far as my local paper is concerned.

After seeing demos of RISC based systems I got the impression that it may be some time before
"the fat lady sings".

There I said it. You may disregard all of the above as an emotional outburst.

Clinton W. Pelto

Clinton W. Pelto

unread,
Apr 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/22/95
to
In article <3n9jte$8...@news4.primenet.com>, eng...@primenet.com (Lawson English) says:
>
>Tomer STrolight (vi...@interlog.com) wrote:
>[snipt]
>: Two points:

>: 1) if Apple has a lot of money lying around then someone will buy it and
>: use that money to pay off the purchase price (this is why many cash rich
>: companies are major takeover targets).
>
>The WSJ has ID'ed Apple as a potential takeover target for this reason.
>
>: 2) If any monolithic, boring company takes over Apple, all is lost. Apple

>: thrives on creativity and new direction. Apple does not develop a new
>: technology because it is strategic, they develop it because they believe
>: it will empower users and create a cooler computer. Am I naive. More
>: likely the people at Apple are. The employees I know there certainly all
>: believe in this ideology.
>
>This is certainly the case. It's the corporate culture at Apple. Folks
>perceive themselves as following in the footsteps of the WOZ and Steve Jobs.
>
>However, unless a CEO of a company is *really* arrogant, this is an
>obvious fact of life about Apple and anyone that thinks that they can
>keep Apple viable while raiding the checking account has ignored the .5
>billion dollar advertising war chests that both MS and IBM have ammassed
>for the OS warz over the next year.
>
>Apple needs that money to survive the coming Lean Times during the
>transition period for Windows 3.x/95 and while becoming an OS-maker instead
>of a hardware maker.
>
>To think otherwise is to doom Apple and to rip off its shareholders.

>
>
>--
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Lawson English __ __ ____ ___ ___ ____
>eng...@primenet.com /__)/__) / / / / /_ /\ / /_ /
> / / \ / / / / /__ / \/ /___ /
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Someone should build a Apple PowerPC inside a PC box and give a demo to the press.
I would bet the press would go ballistic over this "fantastic breakthrough".

Nevin Liber

unread,
Apr 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/22/95
to
In article <3n9d0v$d...@qualcomm.com>, Roger Lo <r...@qualcomm.com> wrote:
>ci...@gate.net (Chad Irby) wrote:

>being reported in the trade rags.

Who's guesses are just as reliable as postings on Usenet.

> Every PC rag that I see (I subscribe to
>about five of them, PC Mag, PC World, Windows, Byte, PC Computing, plus
>MacWorld and MacUser and a few technical PC/Mac journals) reports that
>developers are abandoning the Mac because of declining market share.

Check out the trade rags from three years ago; you'll see the same
thing.

>Conventional wisdom
>says that you must have more hardware market share in order to survive because
>fewer machines now means fewer software sales later.

The market is not that simple. It has also been shown that Mac owners
typically buy more software than their PC counterparts; the above
assumes that this should be equal.
--
Nevin ":-)" Liber ne...@cs.arizona.edu (520) 293-2799
office: (520) 621-1815

Lawson English

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Apr 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/22/95
to

Lawson English

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Apr 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/22/95
to
Roger Lo (r...@qualcomm.com) wrote:
[snipt]
: You could very well be right (I've seen those same statistics before), but I
: suspect conventional wisdom, at least in the financial markets, is looking at
: hardware market share. A lot of developers too since this is the stuff that's
: being reported in the trade rags. Every PC rag that I see (I subscribe to

: about five of them, PC Mag, PC World, Windows, Byte, PC Computing, plus
: MacWorld and MacUser and a few technical PC/Mac journals) reports that
: developers are abandoning the Mac because of declining market share.
: Perception is what is important, not necessarily reality. Conventional wisdom

: says that you must have more hardware market share in order to survive because
: fewer machines now means fewer software sales later.

Actually, the picture is far more confusing than you guys seem to realize.

Last year, Apple had perhaps its worst quarter in the past 7-8 years
(market-share wise at least) because everyone was waiting for the
PowerMacs (the same thing will happen this Summer as everyone waits for
PCI macs and PCI MacOS clones). Last Christmas, Apple sold more computers
in the US than any computer company in history.

Overall, the units-selling market-share probably declined slightly last
year. OTH, last year, the units-in-use market-share actually went up, as
did the percentage of total-revenue-in-software market-share.


Given the above, I think that the trend is obvious:


There isn't one.

--

Albert Blair

unread,
Apr 23, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/23/95
to
Tomer STrolight (vi...@interlog.com) wrote:

: > Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"

: > probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
: > (read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
: > Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
: > makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
: > Justice Dept. might have a say.

: >

: Two points:
: 1) if Apple has a lot of money lying around then someone will buy it and
: use that money to pay off the purchase price (this is why many cash rich
: companies are major takeover targets).

: 2) If any monolithic, boring company takes over Apple, all is lost. Apple


: thrives on creativity and new direction. Apple does not develop a new
: technology because it is strategic, they develop it because they believe
: it will empower users and create a cooler computer. Am I naive. More
: likely the people at Apple are. The employees I know there certainly all
: believe in this ideology.

Actually a compnay only get taken over if the shareholders want to sell.
If they think they've got a good investment it will take a hefty premium
to get them to sell, this premeium could wipe out the advantage of a cash
rich company, as well the company can bid for the shares itself.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albert "The world is full of strange behavior
Ursus Saltatorius Every man has to be his own savior
La Vie dansante I know I can make it on my own if I try
But I'm searchin for a Great Heart
"When you gonna Love you To stand me by"
as much as I do?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steven E. Bakke

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Apr 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/24/95
to
In article <3n91nh$9...@qualcomm.com> Roger Lo, r...@qualcomm.com writes:
>to drop, this currently profitable company would not survive. The securities
>markets always look at the future, not what is current.
>
>On the PC side, the market is not going away so the fight is for marketshare of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>the PC market, not for survival. Since Compaq has the largest marketshare, it
>is considered a successful company.
>

I really don't see the Macintosh market going away either. One fact that
almost
everyone seems to ignore is that the market as a whole for computers is
still
expanding rapidly. Apple gained market share over the past year. They
probably
would have more except for supply problems.(yes, that's their fault)
However, a
gain in market share on top of an expanding industry is far from "going
away".

Also, to be realistic, many Mac users will stick with it for future
upgrades.
That will be true of any platform. This is also why Apple will have a
difficult time converting people from PC's to Macs.

-Steve Bakke
University of Cincinnati

Christopher Robato

unread,
Apr 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/24/95
to

Koan Kid (koa...@io.com) wrote:
: Sangria (san...@inlink.com) spake thusly:

: : If a company like Compaq (who has seen tremendous growth recently)
: : or MS (who has market presence that any company would envy) decided
: : to join forces and buy Apple, there will be banks lining up to lend
: : them money to do so.

: : Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"

: : probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
: : (read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
: : Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
: : makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
: : Justice Dept. might have a say.

: The strange thing about this line of reasoning is that both Apple and

: Compaq have about the same market-share. Yet one is held up as a paragon
: of success and the other is villified as a poor cripple on the verge
: of curling up and dieing. Where's the sense in that?

: And which of them is actually spending money on basic research?

: --
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Koan Kid -=#=- e-mail: koa...@io.com -=#=- WWW: http://www.io.com/~koankid/
: Illuminati Online -=#=- "Gnosis non veritas, veritae."
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apple actually spends more money on basic research, although Compaq leads
in research expenditures in all PC compatible companies (probably finding
a new way to repackage their computers). Actually, Apple eked out an
advantage over Compaq in terms of sales, I remember, with a strong third
and fourth quarter push last year.


Chris
cro...@kuentos.guam.net

johnson s

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Apr 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/24/95
to
cl...@eskimo.com (Clinton W. Pelto) writes:
>Someone should build a Apple PowerPC inside a PC box and give a demo to the press.
>I would bet the press would go ballistic over this "fantastic breakthrough".

Power Computing is, its Power line of MacOS compatable computers are all
based on the baby AT case. The press is in its usual stupor when it comes
to the innovation that has marked Apple and the Apple Macintosh line.
To date I haven't seen anything in the media that indicates that anyone
has understood the potential that has just opened up.

S. Johnson


Joe Ragosta

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Apr 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/24/95
to
In article <D7GBD...@eskimo.com>, cl...@eskimo.com (Clinton W. Pelto) wrote:


> Someone should build a Apple PowerPC inside a PC box and give a demo to
the press.
> I would bet the press would go ballistic over this "fantastic breakthrough".


They did -- it's called PowerComputing.

--
Regards, Joe Ragosta -- 100% Chemical and proud of it.

Microsoft Network is prohibited from redistributing this work in any form, in whole or in part. Copyright, Joseph Ragosta, 1995. License to distribute this post is available to Microsoft for $1000. Posting without permission constitutes an agreement to these terms. Please send notices of violation to Postm...@microsoft.com

Igor Livshits

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Apr 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/24/95
to
In article <3nge21$m...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, srjg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
(johnson s) wrote:

> Power Computing is, its Power line of MacOS compatable computers are all
> based on the baby AT case. The press is in its usual stupor when it comes
> to the innovation that has marked Apple and the Apple Macintosh line.
> To date I haven't seen anything in the media that indicates that anyone
> has understood the potential that has just opened up.

The Wall Street Journal seems to have a clue :) -- in one of the issues of
thepast two weeks.

Cheers, igor
_____
NCSA-UIUC, e: ig...@uiuc.edu, w: (217) 244-0424; Have a Coke and a smile :)

Joe Ragosta

unread,
Apr 24, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/24/95
to
In article <3n8k2f$q...@anaxagoras.io.com>, koa...@io.com (Koan Kid) wrote:

> Sangria (san...@inlink.com) spake thusly:
>
> : If a company like Compaq (who has seen tremendous growth recently)
> : or MS (who has market presence that any company would envy) decided
> : to join forces and buy Apple, there will be banks lining up to lend
> : them money to do so.
>
> : Would they succeed? If Apple doesn't improve their "presence"
> : probably. If Apple does something smart in the next year or two
> : (read: increase market share) then probably not. The fact that
> : Apple also has a lot of ready cash around to buy back their stocks
> : makes it less likely for them to be taken over--not to mention the
> : Justice Dept. might have a say.
>
> The strange thing about this line of reasoning is that both Apple and
> Compaq have about the same market-share. Yet one is held up as a paragon
> of success and the other is villified as a poor cripple on the verge
> of curling up and dieing. Where's the sense in that?

And which one offers "me, too" equipment which anyone can copy? One of the
first rules in business is that you need to differentiate your product to
make money. Which is more differentiated--Compaq or Apple?

>
> And which of them is actually spending money on basic research?
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Koan Kid -=#=- e-mail: koa...@io.com -=#=- WWW: http://www.io.com/~koankid/
> Illuminati Online -=#=- "Gnosis non veritas, veritae."
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--

Stephan Anagnostaras

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Apr 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/25/95
to
In article <3neok4$d...@news.nucleus.com>, albe...@nucleus.com (Albert

Blair) wrote:
> : Two points:
> : 1) if Apple has a lot of money lying around then someone will buy it and
> : use that money to pay off the purchase price (this is why many cash rich
> : companies are major takeover targets).

Apple is not cash-rich; the reason it is an attractive take-over target is
because it is undervalued (the stock). So you can buy it and get more
than your money's worth. However, noone wants to try to buy a company
that is doing well, because its stock price can soar up in one day,
and the company will typically ask for MORE than it is worth. So all of
this talk is kind of silly, it would be interesting if Apple was reporting
losses and was in a really bad cash crunch or something like that,
but all of that is hype. Moreover, it is unlikely anyone can come up with
the money to buy Apple now anyway (it would take at least $10 billion);
it would have been possible up to about two years ago. Of course, a friendly
merger is always a possibility.

Apple has expressed interest in merging with other companies, but this
can't really be taken all that seriously either, since they have been doing
it since 1988. Anyone with any memory remembers that Apple has been
the rumored takeover target of at least these companies:
Sony
IBM
AT&T
Canon
Oracle
Hewlett-Packard

Of course, only two of these companies can even plausibly come up with
the kind of cash needed, so most of these rumours are just stock market
hype (NASDAQ is full of it, after all).

Finally, even if Apple was doing terribly, it wouldn't dissappear as
Wintelians like to fantasize. Apple is a terribly large company, and
they don't dissappear even if they do badly (for example, look at
Zenith, which is much smaller and has done extremely poorly for
many many years).

Stephan

--
STEPHAN ANAGNOSTARAS UCLA BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
STE...@PSYCH.UCLA.EDU

Michael Low

unread,
Apr 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/25/95
to
In article <D7GBD...@eskimo.com>, cl...@eskimo.com (Clinton W. Pelto) wrote:

> Someone should build a Apple PowerPC inside a PC box and give a demo to
the press.
> I would bet the press would go ballistic over this "fantastic breakthrough".

Actually, this is about to happen very soon. Power Computing Corp. will
be shipping high end PowerMac cpus in regular PC-style enclosures at very
competitive prices. Actually, PCC has been making motherboards for Apple
for some time.

PCC is based in Austin, TX. I saw one of their prototypes at CeBIT this
year - seems to work like a Mac but look definitely like a PC clone.
Their Internet address is powercc.com, phone # 512-258-1350.

Rumour is that they will follow the Dell model of distribution so you
might want to hold on to that phone number. ;-)


JML

Michael Low

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Apr 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/25/95
to

Steve T Tang

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Apr 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/25/95
to
.com>
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Distribution:

Michael Low (mtro...@gold.interlog.com) wrote:

: Actually, this is about to happen very soon. Power Computing Corp. will


: be shipping high end PowerMac cpus in regular PC-style enclosures at very
: competitive prices. Actually, PCC has been making motherboards for Apple
: for some time.

: PCC is based in Austin, TX. I saw one of their prototypes at CeBIT this
: year - seems to work like a Mac but look definitely like a PC clone.
: Their Internet address is powercc.com, phone # 512-258-1350.

: Rumour is that they will follow the Dell model of distribution so you
: might want to hold on to that phone number. ;-)

Is Power Computing a public company? If not, are they planning on going
public?

Steve Tang


Arun Gupta

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Apr 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/25/95
to
In article <3neok4$d...@news.nucleus.com>,
Albert Blair <albe...@nucleus.com> wrote:

>: 1) if Apple has a lot of money lying around then someone will buy it and
>: use that money to pay off the purchase price (this is why many cash rich
>: companies are major takeover targets).
>

I thought another company with a lot of cash, perhaps Intel, had
a poison pill, where the cash reserve would be distributed among
current shareholders in case of a take-over bid ?

-arun gupta

Matthew Gabriel

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Apr 25, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/25/95
to
bpo...@vivitech.com (Bradley Polant - Software Engineering) writes:

> I would have to say, Apple could easily be gone in five years. It is unrealistic to compare apple market share to Compaq/IBM. Instead compare Apple
>share to the total PC market. Apple is ,in spite of recent changes, a hardware
>company that has bundled software. The Mac OS is largely Apple only.

And this hardware company has maintained a consistent 10% plus of
the total market. Ten percent is a LOT, more than enough to keep Apple
well above the bankruptcy line. They could loose enough market share to
put them at 5% and still remain as a viable, if smaller, company.

>
>This is your flaw. Dell sells PC machines for a PC market, so they are simply
>a vendor in a established field. Weather the PC/DOS/Windows/NT ship sinks
>or sails has little to do with them. For apple, a drop in share means there
>is less impetious for developers to make Mac software. Less Impetious will
>snowball into no impetious, and the Mac could join the TRS-80 et al.

Wrong. Strong company evangelism and developer support will
determine how many people develop for a company. If a field is choked
with competition, alternative platforms become attractive. Apple makes
great product, both hardware and software, and they still provide a great
deal of developer support. Apple will only be in trouble as long as they
continue their recent trend to turning inward rather than outward. They
need to re-instate their evangelism program, and they need to beef up
their developer and press relations.

It is not the popularity of a platform that determines growth and
staying power, it is the quality of the applications. The Macintosh is
still one up on everyone in the industry in that department.

> As far as SGI, SGI is a smaller firm which does one thing and one thing
>well, graphics. As long as apple has a better user interface than Windows and
>a corner on publishing, they will survive. If Sun had equivilant graphics
>capability to SGI, SGI would be dead. Ditto for Apple.

Wrong. SGI markets high-end Unix graphics servers and processors.
Sun markets desktop computing solutions for high-end applications of many
types, including graphics. SGI will always be out front in their field
due to machines like thier Crimson reality engines and Onyx servers,
machines which have no desktop parralel. Sun will always dominate their
market due to innovative and flexible design, making them appropriate for
industrial use rather than specialized graphics. In short, both companies
are thriving even in such a small-scall niche. Apple has considerably
more market share than both, and has a more solid niche to fill. Apple
will survive because its innovative technologies will always make it
indespensible to the small-scale user. From DTP to video editing, Apple
is on the cutting edge, and making its innovations instantly accessible
to anyone who can point a mouse and devote a little time to practice.
Adobe develops for the Mac first, Autocad developed their GUI on the
Mac, laser printers were first available to the office personal
computer via the Mac. The Mac has made terms like "Digital Imaging",
"Desktop publishing", "Networking", "Interface" and "User friendly" terms
used by everyday consumers, not just technophiles and MIS specialists.
In short, there will always be a niche for a pioneering computer
system. There will always be room in the market for Apple. Who would MS
steal from if they weren't there?

>Basicly, it is insignifcant to compare apple to Dell or Compaq, the only
>comparison is the number of Mac users to Windows users, and the number of
>mac users overall. If #1 falls, the PC will be port of choice. If #2 falls,
>the Mac will die.

No. The only comparison to make is the company-to-company type.
You cannot guage the health of the Mac without it. If Apple thrives and
outsells their competition, the Mac platform will be safe, regardless of
market share loss.

>>--
>>Bob Cassidy


SoupIsGood Food


Brian Combs

unread,
Apr 26, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/26/95
to
In article <mtrocomm-250...@mtrocomm.interlog.com>,
mtro...@gold.interlog.com (Michael Low) wrote:

> In article <D7GBD...@eskimo.com>, cl...@eskimo.com (Clinton W. Pelto) wrote:
>
> > Someone should build a Apple PowerPC inside a PC box and give a demo to
> the press.
> > I would bet the press would go ballistic over this "fantastic
breakthrough".
>

> Actually, this is about to happen very soon. Power Computing Corp. will
> be shipping high end PowerMac cpus in regular PC-style enclosures at very
> competitive prices. Actually, PCC has been making motherboards for Apple
> for some time.
>
> PCC is based in Austin, TX. I saw one of their prototypes at CeBIT this
> year - seems to work like a Mac but look definitely like a PC clone.
> Their Internet address is powercc.com, phone # 512-258-1350.
>
> Rumour is that they will follow the Dell model of distribution so you
> might want to hold on to that phone number. ;-)

Or you can call our direct sales line, 800.999.7279.

Brian Combs

--
Brian Combs Tel: (800) 999-7279 (main)
Power Computer Corporation Tel: (512) 250-3381 (direct)
Austin Operations Center Fax: (512) 250-3390
12337 Technology Blvd. Email: bco...@powercc.com
Austin, Texas 78727 WWW: http://www.powercc.com

Brian Combs

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Apr 26, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/26/95
to
In article <3nje7d$2...@nnrp.ucs.ubc.ca>, stt...@unixg.ubc.ca (Steve T

Tang) wrote:
> Is Power Computing a public company? If not, are they planning on going
> public?

We are currently a privately held company. I don't know of any
immediate plans to go public.

Michael Lewchuk

unread,
Apr 26, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/26/95
to
sou...@enterprise.america.com (Matthew Gabriel) writes:

> Wrong. Strong company evangelism and developer support will
>determine how many people develop for a company. If a field is choked

I believe one of the arguments put forth earlier on was the question of how
much "developer support" (or, developer incentive) Apple actually provides.

>deal of developer support. Apple will only be in trouble as long as they
>continue their recent trend to turning inward rather than outward. They

Recent? I find that Apple has been turning inwards ever since the Mac was
invented. The "Mac clone" market now seems to be a tad of a turn outwards, but
only just a tad.

> It is not the popularity of a platform that determines growth and
>staying power, it is the quality of the applications. The Macintosh is
>still one up on everyone in the industry in that department.

Your statement is diretly contradicted by reality, namely the existence and
popularity of MSDOS Intel boxes.

>Apple will survive because its innovative technologies will always make it
>indespensible to the small-scale user. From DTP to video editing, Apple

Which reminds me, isn't Apple going to PCI graphics in the next few years? :)

>is on the cutting edge, and making its innovations instantly accessible
>to anyone who can point a mouse and devote a little time to practice.
>Adobe develops for the Mac first, Autocad developed their GUI on the
>Mac, laser printers were first available to the office personal
>computer via the Mac. The Mac has made terms like "Digital Imaging",
>"Desktop publishing", "Networking", "Interface" and "User friendly" terms
>used by everyday consumers, not just technophiles and MIS specialists.

However what has it done lately? Bubblejet and laserjet printers for the
PC and Mac compete regularly. OS/2 Warp and Win'95 (maybe - if it ever
comes out and if it can deliver what it promises) are catching up on the Mac
interface. And, lo and behold, the Amiga may return and stuff its nose
into the mouse/GUI home computer market. PC software already competes against
Mac software in terms of cute interface and ease of use. Okay, except for
MicroSoft Windows products. :)

I had no idea that Mac pioneered "networking". I thought Amway did that. :)
Seriously, these terms need a bit of definition unless you are talking about
the ones that computer magazines made popular. And combine "interface" and
"user friendly" into "user friendly interface".

I have no idea who made "digital imaging" and "desktop publishing" popular
terms for "everyday users". My guess it was the Amigae for the former and
Macs for the latter but I could be wrong.

> In short, there will always be a niche for a pioneering computer
>system. There will always be room in the market for Apple. Who would MS
>steal from if they weren't there?

MicroSoft is NOT the PC market, no matter how much they believe they are.
The PC market would survive if not another copy of MSDOS or MS Windows
was minted.

This I believe is a common mistake of Apple users: Apple is both a hardware
and software company, while the PC market is fragmented into hardware,
software, and hardware/software companies. Thus, the PC market can survive
without MicroSoft, IBM, Compaq, Dell, or any other number of PC vendors.
The people who do the innovation are not necessarily Compaq/Dell/IBM, or
even MicroSoft, but PC hardware companies - the people who make the CDs,
disk drives, modems, cards, CPUs, etc. Each tries to out-sell and
out-innovate the other. So you tend to get more innovation, but in a
different way than you do at Apple. Because it is not a piecemeal setup,
Apple can design their entire computer, weighing each feature against others.
PC boxes are sold piecemeal, so vendors tend to concentrate on speed, price,
and size. Thus, PC boxes are often less expensive and more powerful than
Mac boxes, while Mac boxes have a better overall design to them.

>>Basicly, it is insignifcant to compare apple to Dell or Compaq, the only
>>comparison is the number of Mac users to Windows users, and the number of
>>mac users overall. If #1 falls, the PC will be port of choice. If #2 falls,
>>the Mac will die.

> No. The only comparison to make is the company-to-company type.
>You cannot guage the health of the Mac without it. If Apple thrives and
>outsells their competition, the Mac platform will be safe, regardless of
>market share loss.

How about if Apple does not outsell its competition? I honestly don't believe
Apple will die. I don't believe they'll "thrive" either unless they, well,
do something innovative in terms of PR/Marketing. The best thing Apple
could do at this point is to steal MicroSoft's marketing division. Any
marketing division which can sell MicroSoft Bob at all deserves note.

>>>Bob Cassidy

Michael Lewchuk
lew...@cs.UAlberta.CA

johnson s

unread,
Apr 26, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/26/95
to
According to the latest PowerPC news Oracle tried to buy Apple with a
few other companies. Apparently the other companies, who were supposed to
take over Apple's hardware division, back out so the deal fell through.


S. Johnson


Damir Smitlener

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Apr 26, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/26/95
to
In article <3nm5tp$k...@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>, lew...@cs.ualberta.ca
(Michael Lewchuk) wrote:

[...snip...]

> Because it is not a piecemeal setup,
> Apple can design their entire computer, weighing each feature against others.
> PC boxes are sold piecemeal, so vendors tend to concentrate on speed, price,
> and size. Thus, PC boxes are often less expensive and more powerful than
> Mac boxes, while Mac boxes have a better overall design to them.

This last sentence is just about the most succint explanation of the basic
differences between PCs and Macs I've heard. Nicely put. And before one of
you hotheads gets out of hand, I consider the statement a *compliment* for
Apple.

[...snip...]

--
damir smitlener |
da...@mindspring.com |
smi...@optica.mirc.gatech.edu |

Roger Lo

unread,
Apr 27, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/27/95
to
>I have a question for you experts. Say I have a chunk of Apple stock.
>Suppose someone stages a hostile takeover of Apple. Suppose further that
>I don't want to sell to the new owner. Have I got any choice in the
>matter? What happens if I simply decide to not sell?

The whole point in these offers is for the new owners to get controlling
interest of a company's stock. Then the merger is forced. When this happens,
the company's stock ceases to exist. But never fear, if a company is taken
over, the new entity converts the old stock into stock for the new merged
organization. So if you don't sell and Apple gets bought out, you'll end up
with an equivalent value of the buying company's stock. But for this company
to buy out Apple, enough shareholders will have to sell their stock to the
buying company.


Brian Lowry

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Apr 27, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/27/95
to
In article <damir-26049...@damir.mindspring.com>, da...@is.net
(Damir Smitlener) wrote:

> In article <3nm5tp$k...@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>, lew...@cs.ualberta.ca
> (Michael Lewchuk) wrote:

> [...snip...]

>> Because it is not a piecemeal setup,


>> Apple can design their entire computer, weighing each feature against others.
>> PC boxes are sold piecemeal, so vendors tend to concentrate on speed, price,
>> and size. Thus, PC boxes are often less expensive and more powerful than
>> Mac boxes, while Mac boxes have a better overall design to them.

> This last sentence is just about the most succint explanation of the basic


> differences between PCs and Macs I've heard. Nicely put. And before one of
> you hotheads gets out of hand, I consider the statement a *compliment* for
> Apple.

It may be a compliment to Apple, but the hundreds of dollars price
difference between the PPC601 and a comparable Pentium (which is much
pricier) certainly negate most of the chop-shop price benefits of buying a
clone. Personally, I find monitors are one of the biggest expenses, and
the reason PCs are generally less expensive is that most of the PC users
are far less demanding than Mac users (since Mac users have a standard
monitor line from Apple to measure by, and perhaps also because the MacOS
is less garish and toy-like than Windows and doesn't look good on a blurry
monitor).

--

Brian Lowry

BrianJ...@ualberta.ca

johnson s

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Apr 28, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/28/95
to
I really think that Apple should port MacOS to x86 architechture so that
it and Windows9x can compete head to head. Although MacOS may only acheive
a relatively small penetration of the x86 market, nevertheless it will
provide a real yardstick to beat down the hyperinflated claims of Windows
cronies.

S. Johnson


Sho Kuwamoto

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Apr 28, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/28/95
to
In article <ray-260495...@bear.dfrc.nasa.gov>,

Jeff Ray <r...@xfe.dfrc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>I have a question for you experts. Say I have a chunk of Apple stock.
>Suppose someone stages a hostile takeover of Apple. Suppose further that
>I don't want to sell to the new owner. Have I got any choice in the
>matter? What happens if I simply decide to not sell?

[numbers inflated here, folx...]
Say the current stock price is $35. Say the takeover war
drives the price up to $50, although it will surely go back
down to $35 when it's all over. Say it looks as if the
takeover bid will be successful regardless of your decision.
Now, do you sell?

-Sho
--
s...@physics.purdue.edu <<-- finger this account to find out what I'm
having for lunch!

<A HREF="http://physics.purdue.edu/~sho/homepage.html">Sho Kuwamoto</A>.

Jeff Ray

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Apr 28, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/28/95
to
In article <3nr0gi$3...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, srjg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
(johnson s) wrote:

I'd hazard a guess that the engineering cost of the port would be too
expensive to be recovered by the poor sales of such a product.

I think Apple would be better served by having their emulator writers add
a Windows emulator to the current PMac's 68k emulator. Simple, no hassle
cross-compatability for the crossover market. Mounds of Vertical Market
software immediatley available. Make it extensible, so that the user can
drop a cheap 486/Pentium-on-a-card accelerator into it, and even the
PowerUsers will have to take notice.

--
Jeff Ray M/S 4840A Official Correspondence Only:
NASA/CSC Internet: r...@xfe.dfrc.nasa.gov
Dryden Flight Research Center
P. O. Box 273 All Others:
Edwards, CA 93523-5000 AOL: Jeff Ray (jef...@aol.com)
eWorld: JeffRay (jef...@eworld.com)
(805) 258-3754 CI$: 70661,2607 (70661...@compuserve.com)

Joe Ragosta

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Apr 28, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/28/95
to
In article <ray-260495...@bear.dfrc.nasa.gov>,
r...@xfe.dfrc.nasa.gov (Jeff Ray) wrote:


>
> I have a question for you experts. Say I have a chunk of Apple stock.
> Suppose someone stages a hostile takeover of Apple. Suppose further that
> I don't want to sell to the new owner. Have I got any choice in the
> matter? What happens if I simply decide to not sell?

I'm not an expert, but I've been through this before with a small stock I
didn't want to sell. The stock was trading at 8 times earnings, steady
earnings growth, and dividends were about 15% per year (yeah, I wish I
could find a few more like that, too). Anyway, the company sold out to a
major investor and I only got about a 5% premium over where the stock was
trading. If the majority of stockholders want to sell, there's little or
nothing you can do.

The only option would be a class action suit stating that shareholders are
not being offered a fair value. This wins occasionally, but I don't think
it's even half the time.

goo...@ibm.net

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Apr 30, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/30/95
to
>Apple has today 10-12% of the market depending on who you ask.
>They have never been considerably higher than that (at least never above
>20%), yet they provide somewhere near 20-30% of software revenues - this
>is most likely an all-time high for Mac sofware market share. So the Mac
>software market is growing while the hardware market is doomed? Macintosh
>has been in the 10-12% range for most of it's life - 11 years now. Why now

Mac actually has a larger market share today, especially in high-end computing.
Apple ranks among those such as Sun and SGI, providing power and reliability
that simply arent' there in a PC. For example, Macs make up 60% of CompUSA's
sales, last I heard, especially in the midwest. Software arguments are easily
slanted towards Mac. Sure, there's lots of stuff for the PC, but it's mostly
games (for which the graphics are done on a Mac) but the real business and
graphics computing is there for the mac. Thank heavens Micro$oft hasn't made
as big an impact in the Mac world as they have in the PC world. (The reason
I'm forced to a Mac after a lifetime and a family full of PC's.) Yes, I'd say
that apple has a bright future.

John Nagle

unread,
Apr 30, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/30/95
to
goo...@ibm.net writes:
>Mac actually has a larger market share today, especially in high-end computing.
>Apple ranks among those such as Sun and SGI, providing power and reliability
>that simply arent' there in a PC.

Huh? Macs are not, by current standards, "high-end computing".
The high end of the Mac line is close to the low end of the SGI line,
both in price and performance, but that's as close as it gets. The
SGI line starts at about $5000 and goes up to about $250,000.

As for reliability, the Mac is the only major machine left on the market
with no protected-mode OS and no memory parity.

Macs are great midrange desktop machines, but "high-end" they're not.

John Nagle

Kevin Dobbins

unread,
May 1, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/1/95
to
Actually I think they should get the proprietary bus out of the PowerMac and compete head to head with the PowerPC. Apple should market their OS to run on any PowerPC including the PowerMac. Apple may suffer severly in the hardware business if they let PCI PowerPC's run away.

-Kevin <std disclaimer>


Damir Smitlener

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May 1, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/1/95
to
In article <3o3ukq$p...@qualcomm.com>, Roger Lo <r...@qualcomm.com> wrote:

> ig...@uiuc.edu (Igor Livshits) wrote:
> >In article <3o3n91$n...@qualcomm.com>, Roger Lo <r...@qualcomm.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Note that
> >> Windows 96 is not released yet so Windows machines do not have memory
> >> protection either.
> >
> >Well, if Info-Mac is to be trusted, Win95 will not have true memory
> >protection nor preemption in order to preserve backward compatibility.
>
> Memory protection will exist on Win9x for all 32-bit apps. 16-bit Win3.1 apps
> will still live in their own shared address spaces. So in a way, Win9x has
> true memory protection, but only for new apps that take advantage of it.
> Copland will likely have the same type of protection for new apps versus old
> apps, though I'm not entirely sure on this.

Infoworld has run extensive articles detailing how Win95 does not have
proper memory protection for the lower 1MB, where so much system stuff
*still* resides. 32-bit apps are protected from directly interfering with
each other, but the system itself isn't protected from apps 32-bit or
otherwise, so 32-bit apps can bring down other 32-bit apps by crashing the
system.

OTOH, it is still better than Win3.x.

Michael Peirce

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May 1, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/1/95
to

In article <nagleD7...@netcom.com> (alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.powerpc,misc.invest.stocks), na...@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
> As for reliability, the Mac is the only major machine left on the market
> with no protected-mode OS and no memory parity.

Macs do have A/UX, a Unix with the usual protected memory.

Also, there were some Mac models ith parity memory. No one really
cared and later models dropped this.

--
Michael Peirce mpe...@peircesw.com
Peirce Software, Inc. Makers of Peirce Print Tools, Smoothie, & DeskPicture

voice: +1 408 244 6554, fax: +1 408 244 6882
719 Hibiscus Place, San Jose California, USA

Damir Smitlener

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May 1, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/1/95
to
In article <CNjbKKK...@outpost.peircesw.com>,
mpe...@outpost.peircesw.com (Michael Peirce) wrote:

> In article <nagleD7...@netcom.com>
(alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.powerpc,misc.invest.stocks),
na...@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
> > As for reliability, the Mac is the only major machine left on
the market
> > with no protected-mode OS and no memory parity.
>
> Macs do have A/UX, a Unix with the usual protected memory.

And how well A/UX run on any current Macs, PPC or otherwise?

Roger Lo

unread,
May 1, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/1/95
to
da...@is.net (Damir Smitlener) wrote:
>In article <CNjbKKK...@outpost.peircesw.com>,
>mpe...@outpost.peircesw.com (Michael Peirce) wrote:
>
>> In article <nagleD7...@netcom.com>
>(alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.powerpc,misc.invest.stocks),
>na...@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
>> > As for reliability, the Mac is the only major machine left on
>the market
>> > with no protected-mode OS and no memory parity.
>>

For one thing, Macs have the capability of using memory parity. This ability
was added in a few years back (I don't remember when exactly) when some
government bureaucrats, in their attempt to keep Macs out of government (of
course bureaucrats like PC's better), put in a requirement that all government
desktop computers must have parity checking. So Apple put them in. By
default, a Mac comes with 8-bit memory chips, but you can put in 9-bit chips
and therefore have parity checking. The reason why Apple left it out initially
was because it was stupid to have it in the first place. If you get a parity
error, you'll likely crash anyway and with only 1-bit you cannot do error
recovery. So why go through the expense?

Secondly, Marconi is due out at the end of the year with Copland about six
months behind it. That will give you your memory protection. Note that


Windows 96 is not released yet so Windows machines do not have memory

protection either. We'll see whether Windows or MacOS with protected memory
comes out first. I'm not counting Windows NT because it is not a widespread OS
and because it really isn't Windows. It just shares a common name. NT is more
like OS/2 since it came out of the original OS/2 2.0 project.


Igor Livshits

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May 1, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/1/95
to
In article <3o3n91$n...@qualcomm.com>, Roger Lo <r...@qualcomm.com> wrote:

> Note that
> Windows 96 is not released yet so Windows machines do not have memory
> protection either.

Well, if Info-Mac is to be trusted, Win95 will not have true memory


protection nor preemption in order to preserve backward compatibility.

Cheers, Igor
_____
NCSA-UIUC, e: ig...@uiuc.edu, w: (217) 244-0424; Have a Coke and a smile :)

Roger Lo

unread,
May 2, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/2/95
to
ig...@uiuc.edu (Igor Livshits) wrote:
>In article <3o3n91$n...@qualcomm.com>, Roger Lo <r...@qualcomm.com> wrote:
>
>> Note that
>> Windows 96 is not released yet so Windows machines do not have memory
>> protection either.
>
>Well, if Info-Mac is to be trusted, Win95 will not have true memory
>protection nor preemption in order to preserve backward compatibility.

Memory protection will exist on Win9x for all 32-bit apps. 16-bit Win3.1 apps

J T

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May 2, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/2/95
to
In article <damir-01059...@damir.mindspring.com>, da...@is.net (Damir Smitlener) says:

:: >> Note that


:: >> Windows 96 is not released yet so Windows machines do not have memory
:: >> protection either.
:: >
:: >Well, if Info-Mac is to be trusted, Win95 will not have true memory
:: >protection nor preemption in order to preserve backward compatibility.
::
:: Memory protection will exist on Win9x for all 32-bit apps. 16-bit Win3.1 apps
:: will still live in their own shared address spaces. So in a way, Win9x has
:: true memory protection, but only for new apps that take advantage of it.
:: Copland will likely have the same type of protection for new apps versus old
:: apps, though I'm not entirely sure on this.

:
:Infoworld has run extensive articles detailing how Win95 does not have


:proper memory protection for the lower 1MB, where so much system stuff
:*still* resides. 32-bit apps are protected from directly interfering with
:each other, but the system itself isn't protected from apps 32-bit or
:otherwise, so 32-bit apps can bring down other 32-bit apps by crashing the
:system.

It's been interesting, but IMO this thread has slowly deteriorated into
a highly technical discussion, probably outside the scope of this
newsgroup. Maybe you might want to consider moving it to a newsgroup
that deals with operating systems?

Steve Tang

Bill Smith

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May 2, 1995, 3:00:00 AM5/2/95
to

Anyone replying to this thread....please take misc.invest.stocks
out of the cross-postings. Thanks.

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