IBM didn't really lose their market lead until the PS/2 was introduced in 1986-7. They were making a ton of money selling open, clone-able PCs.
As for why they didn't buy MS, I'd guess that it was mainly because Gates wouldn't sell. Don't forget that MS was giving them a sweetheart deal, and they were getting DOS essentially for free (in exchange for redistribution rights).
I can't quite recall the details of IBM's antitrust case, but it was more complex than software/hardware bundling (IBM has always built their own OS for every system but the PC), and it was limited to the midrange S/38 and AS/400 lines. I believe it had something to do with leasing practices.
Off-topic, but I really question that IBM's PC mis-steps had anything to do with the anti-trust case.
If anything, the huge/2 screwup was the result of monopolistic actions, not the avoidance there of. They tried to extend their mainframe monopoly by introducing a mainframe-centric client OS (OS/2) that favored a proprietary hardware platform (PS/2). The plan failed mainly due to poor execution (and because the mainframes started to get their butts kicked by client-server Unix systems).
But, you are essentially correct that Microsoft is "whistling dixie" internally when it comes to the anti-trust trial. If anything, they are consolidating divisions across product groups to make a breakup more difficult. --
assuming OS X survives, MS will have to replace it with a Cocoa-native port
Why? I would imagine that Apple needs to support Carbon indefinately. (90% of the apps Mac users use will be Carbon, not Cocoa.)
That means Unix
No it doesn't. Cocoa is the old NeXT API. Athough it expensively used to run on Solaris, HPUX, and Windows, it's not a normal Unix API. Perhaps GNUStep, someday. --
The IE/Unix ports were so crappy that one wondered why they even bothered. (Except for marketing reasons.)
It could be that an Office/Unix port would just be a "dogfood" way to improved their unix porting libraries to the point where they are usable for large applications. If the porting libs could run Office decently, they probably could run anything.
Why would MS invest in unix porting libs? Probably not for their own purposes, but to give away or sell cheap to traditional Unix application vendors. "Don't maintain your Unix source tree -- save money and develop on Win32 only." Corel is already pursuing such a strategy for Unix apps, except using Winelib instead of MS's tools. --
What would be worse if Linux vendors found themselves in the same boat as Apple, with Microsoft threating to pull Office for Linux unless they got certain concessions.
Of course that would be a silly scenario -- MS would have to give RedHat (etc) a desktop marketshare before they could have the power to take it away. (And, no, Linux vendors don't currently have a desktop marketshare in the Windows or MacOS sense. What they have is Unix workstation marketshare, with a userbase that by-in-large couldn't give a damn about mainstream office productivity software.)
On the other hand, A Linux port of IE for Solaris port could happen. --
I dunno, I have a Pentium machine that runs an EISA PnP Scan, a real slow memory count (to 112MB), and two SCSI cards. On top of that, System Commander.
Takes over a minute just to get to the bootloader. --
55/45 is usually considered a pretty substantial victory for a local election. It will probably be enough to discourage the proponents from just putting it on the ballot again next year.
It's especially big news when you consider it's Feb. ballot ('slient majority' less likely to vote), a conservative town, and the Republican primary (huge turnout mobilized by christian right, although apparently there was quite a bit of Democratic monkeywrenching too.) --
Your distro manufacturer may have packaged netscape incorrectly. See their site for details or upgrades.
Does this explain why Netscape/Linux seems so much more cruddy (in my experience) than Netscape/Solaris? Or is it something more basic (libc bugs, XFree bugs, Lesstif bugs, etc.)?
--
Re:Repeat after me: OS X != BSD
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 1
Since BSD-lite is 10 years old and unmaintained, using a modern variant only makes sense.
Obviously, there is BSD code in the Mac kernel -- it wouldn't be able to do the BSD "personality".
However, the point is that there is no Mach in the classic monolithic unix *BSD kernels. Therefore Mac OS X is a very different beast than the BSDs, although it will be API compatible.
The original poster is essentially correct. His post is to counteract the numerous incorrect Slashdot posts which argue "Since it's based on BSD, you can port such-n-such driver.", or "Since it's based on BSD, Apache performance will be similar." --
There been a number of writing tools put out over the years based on the idea of flowcharts, or 3x5 cards, or lines and arrows, or whatever. Even Word includes (or used to) an outline editor.
At some point you generally need to dump the output into an editor to get output that actually looks like a real document, so these things aren't really a replacement for a word processor.
IMO, I tend to agree with Myrvhold -- these things tend to suffer from the "Adobe Illustrator" problem -- you want to draw pretty pictures, but in the end you have to learn quite a bit about the UI mechanisms, which is enough to minimize it's use as a tool to assist with the casual thought process. --
This was common before MS asserted power over the vendors. Things like Compaq DOS 3.x and Compaq Windows 3.0 were pretty common (Compaq used to have a funky display controller that required some custom DOS stuff.)
There were also certain Compaq servers that would only run a customized version of NT 3.1 that includes a Compaq HAL. Obviously this (and the Abit Linux) stuff is meant to be transitional until the vendor includes the code in their main tree. --
If you are clued in enough to want to upgrade your glibc, you are more than clued in enough to know that RedHat upgrades can be downloaded for free or purchased for two bucks from cheapbytes.
If you want a distribution that is all statically linked, go for it and make your own. Call it "Primitive Linux", or something and you'll probably find a fan base. I'll stick to dynamic linking and performing OS upgrades, myself. --
Microsoft also offered DOS to IBM essentially for free. (The catch was that MS retained distribution rights.)
Since IBM didn't really think the OS was all that important in the big picture, it probably seemed like an excellent deal to them at the time. Of course, Microsoft was already aware of the 'cloning' opportunities. --
The alternate story I heard was "Kildall was too drunk and told IBM where to shove their NDA."
True or not, that story fits better because it would give the blue suits enough justification to pass on the leading microcomputer OS, and go with MS's clone. --
Hardware-wise they are pretty similar (cut down PMac 6100). I don't know about software, but I'd be pretty shocked if the settop box was all that different than the web interface the Pippen shipped with. --
They went to press with quite a few stories about "Microsoft to port Windows 98 to Macs".
I highly doubt there was any evidence for this what-so-ever, besides anonymous coward e-mails pulling their chain.
Furthermore, they seem totally unaware that: A) Windows 98 has enough x86 assembly that it's pretty much non-portable as it stands. B) Microsoft had already ported Windows NT to PowerPC -- the lack of Mac support was purely a political issue.
These guys are total clowns -- Note how they post a story, Slashdot links to it, and then they post the Slashdot link as "confirmation" of their story. WTF?
If anything, their site is a good way to check what misinformation Apple is spreading (Settop box prototypes right before the iMac launch, for example. Whoops -- if they had acutally be reading their own rumors, they would realize that the settop box was the well known and cancelled Pippen project.) What reliable information they do print, they get from other sites such as www.appleinsider.com.
I was making the assumption that "new app" wouldn't be 3270-based. Of course, in some cases it will be, in which case use your existing SNA or twinax or whatever.
In most cases, a TCP/IP network won't be a "new network" -- it's already been paid for, and if WWW browser clients are acceptable, they've already been deployed. Which puts an intranet application on equal footing as a SNA/3270 terminal app deployment-wise, and probably with significantly lower training cost. --
WinWP 5.1 was advertised as WYSIWYG. I really ought to go download a eval of WP 8 or 9, because on further reflection it's unfair to comment on a 7 year old version of the software. They may well have solved the "dangling tags" problem to my satisfaction.
But like you say -- different strokes for different folks.
Like I said -- "Legacy" -- Not good enough to deploy more of, but good enough not to replace. Hopefully there aren't any *new* applications being rolled out that require SNA on the client or a gateway box.
Customers who still rely on OS/2 for this purpose would probably love to have the source code. --
I'm not going to flame you -- OS/2 is an OK system, not great. It's lacking even when compared to WinNT in certain departments.
However you have to understand is that one reason banks use(d) OS/2 extensively is because IBM tied a bunch of mainframe SNA freindly applications in with the OS in the early days. Back in the old days, this was considered quite a feature because it allowed you to do client-server stuff with your mainframes. It also gave a lot of people the feeling that IBM wanted to turn your personal computer into a 5250 terminal, and wanted to crush the PC Server market to protect their profit margins.
Now that IBM big iron talks TCP/IP, HTTP, ODBC, JDBC, XML and so on, and even runs Linux in a VM, why would anyone bother with a SNA-based client application? And without the special application support, why bother with the 'deviant' OS? (to quote an old dilbert strip)
I hate to say it, but at this point OS/2 is essentialy 'legacy' (which means that if it's working, don't replace it). They really ought to release the source and let the people who really care take a crack at it. --
Word includes a PageMaker-like drag+drop interface (that is too retarded to be worthwhile) -- this replaces the old Word v4/5/6/95 'frames' option (also totally broken).
If your documents are complex enough to need this feature, I'd suggest getting a program that can really handle the job.
(While on this topic -- have you noticed how totally braindead Word's drawing tools are? The sad thing is that when I got Mac Word v4.0 as a student many years ago (for $35), it came with a free copy of "SuperPaint". SuperPaint kicks Word 9's sorry drawing tool's ass from here to Sunday, and it's a 10 year old program.) --
Word could never have "Reveal Codes" because there are no 'codes' in Word -- every style is a property of either a character or a paragraph object. Show Paragraph Symbol let you see where paragraphs begin and end, if it's non-obvious in your document, you can also show the style name to the left of the text.
This, IMO, is the Right Way to design a GUI word processor.
I had the same experence as you using WordPerfect for Windows (5.1 and 6 - it might have changed by now) -- deleting a block of text would turn my whole document into 24 pt Bold text, just because I accidentially deleted the </B> <FONT> 'code' which had stupidly wrapped paragraphs. WP is only usable with "Reveal Codes" on, which is hardly WYSIWYG -- you might as well just write HTML.
When Win95 was released, IBM said that if they had source code access (as they did with Win 3.x), it wouldn't be a problem to get it running on WinOS2.
I don't know if IBM would bother at this point, but it would be nice if Microsoft allowed a source release of the versions of OS/2 it co-owns (v2.0 and below). This would allow IBM to open source most or all of the later versions. --
Finally, people have been thumping the Netware is dead drum for years!
You might be surprised at how many Netware servers have been in production for more than five years in small offices
The reason Novell is "dead" is right in your comment -- a huge portion of the customer base never upgraded from 3.x, meaning Novell has to survive on mimimal revenue. Cheers to NW 3.x, I guess.
Have you ever looked inside of the box of a new consumer computer? It contains a giant poster explaining how to plug everything in. Note that all of the plugs are also now color coded.
Why? Because plugging everything in is a major source of support phone calls. --
Slashdot Mirror
IBM didn't really lose their market lead until the PS/2 was introduced in 1986-7. They were making a ton of money selling open, clone-able PCs.
As for why they didn't buy MS, I'd guess that it was mainly because Gates wouldn't sell. Don't forget that MS was giving them a sweetheart deal, and they were getting DOS essentially for free (in exchange for redistribution rights).
I can't quite recall the details of IBM's antitrust case, but it was more complex than software/hardware bundling (IBM has always built their own OS for every system but the PC), and it was limited to the midrange S/38 and AS/400 lines. I believe it had something to do with leasing practices.
--
Off-topic, but I really question that IBM's PC mis-steps had anything to do with the anti-trust case.
/2 screwup was the result of monopolistic actions, not the avoidance there of. They tried to extend their mainframe monopoly by introducing a mainframe-centric client OS (OS/2) that favored a proprietary hardware platform (PS/2). The plan failed mainly due to poor execution (and because the mainframes started to get their butts kicked by client-server Unix systems).
If anything, the huge
But, you are essentially correct that Microsoft is "whistling dixie" internally when it comes to the anti-trust trial. If anything, they are consolidating divisions across product groups to make a breakup more difficult.
--
assuming OS X survives, MS will have to replace it with a Cocoa-native port
Why? I would imagine that Apple needs to support Carbon indefinately. (90% of the apps Mac users use will be Carbon, not Cocoa.)
That means Unix
No it doesn't. Cocoa is the old NeXT API. Athough it expensively used to run on Solaris, HPUX, and Windows, it's not a normal Unix API. Perhaps GNUStep, someday.
--
The IE/Unix ports were so crappy that one wondered why they even bothered. (Except for marketing reasons.)
It could be that an Office/Unix port would just be a "dogfood" way to improved their unix porting libraries to the point where they are usable for large applications. If the porting libs could run Office decently, they probably could run anything.
Why would MS invest in unix porting libs? Probably not for their own purposes, but to give away or sell cheap to traditional Unix application vendors. "Don't maintain your Unix source tree -- save money and develop on Win32 only." Corel is already pursuing such a strategy for Unix apps, except using Winelib instead of MS's tools.
--
What would be worse if Linux vendors found themselves in the same boat as Apple, with Microsoft threating to pull Office for Linux unless they got certain concessions.
Of course that would be a silly scenario -- MS would have to give RedHat (etc) a desktop marketshare before they could have the power to take it away. (And, no, Linux vendors don't currently have a desktop marketshare in the Windows or MacOS sense. What they have is Unix workstation marketshare, with a userbase that by-in-large couldn't give a damn about mainstream office productivity software.)
On the other hand, A Linux port of IE for Solaris port could happen.
--
I dunno, I have a Pentium machine that runs an EISA PnP Scan, a real slow memory count (to 112MB), and two SCSI cards. On top of that, System Commander.
Takes over a minute just to get to the bootloader.
--
55/45 is usually considered a pretty substantial victory for a local election. It will probably be enough to discourage the proponents from just putting it on the ballot again next year.
It's especially big news when you consider it's Feb. ballot ('slient majority' less likely to vote), a conservative town, and the Republican primary (huge turnout mobilized by christian right, although apparently there was quite a bit of Democratic monkeywrenching too.)
--
Your distro manufacturer may have packaged netscape incorrectly. See their site for details or upgrades.
Does this explain why Netscape/Linux seems so much more cruddy (in my experience) than Netscape/Solaris? Or is it something more basic (libc bugs, XFree bugs, Lesstif bugs, etc.)?
--
Since BSD-lite is 10 years old and unmaintained, using a modern variant only makes sense.
Obviously, there is BSD code in the Mac kernel -- it wouldn't be able to do the BSD "personality".
However, the point is that there is no Mach in the classic monolithic unix *BSD kernels. Therefore Mac OS X is a very different beast than the BSDs, although it will be API compatible.
The original poster is essentially correct. His post is to counteract the numerous incorrect Slashdot posts which argue "Since it's based on BSD, you can port such-n-such driver.", or "Since it's based on BSD, Apache performance will be similar."
--
There been a number of writing tools put out over the years based on the idea of flowcharts, or 3x5 cards, or lines and arrows, or whatever. Even Word includes (or used to) an outline editor.
At some point you generally need to dump the output into an editor to get output that actually looks like a real document, so these things aren't really a replacement for a word processor.
IMO, I tend to agree with Myrvhold -- these things tend to suffer from the "Adobe Illustrator" problem -- you want to draw pretty pictures, but in the end you have to learn quite a bit about the UI mechanisms, which is enough to minimize it's use as a tool to assist with the casual thought process.
--
This was common before MS asserted power over the vendors. Things like Compaq DOS 3.x and Compaq Windows 3.0 were pretty common (Compaq used to have a funky display controller that required some custom DOS stuff.)
There were also certain Compaq servers that would only run a customized version of NT 3.1 that includes a Compaq HAL. Obviously this (and the Abit Linux) stuff is meant to be transitional until the vendor includes the code in their main tree.
--
If you are clued in enough to want to upgrade your glibc, you are more than clued in enough to know that RedHat upgrades can be downloaded for free or purchased for two bucks from cheapbytes.
If you want a distribution that is all statically linked, go for it and make your own. Call it "Primitive Linux", or something and you'll probably find a fan base. I'll stick to dynamic linking and performing OS upgrades, myself.
--
Microsoft also offered DOS to IBM essentially for free. (The catch was that MS retained distribution rights.)
Since IBM didn't really think the OS was all that important in the big picture, it probably seemed like an excellent deal to them at the time. Of course, Microsoft was already aware of the 'cloning' opportunities.
--
The alternate story I heard was "Kildall was too drunk and told IBM where to shove their NDA."
True or not, that story fits better because it would give the blue suits enough justification to pass on the leading microcomputer OS, and go with MS's clone.
--
Hardware-wise they are pretty similar (cut down PMac 6100). I don't know about software, but I'd be pretty shocked if the settop box was all that different than the web interface the Pippen shipped with.
--
They went to press with quite a few stories about "Microsoft to port Windows 98 to Macs".
I highly doubt there was any evidence for this what-so-ever, besides anonymous coward e-mails pulling their chain.
Furthermore, they seem totally unaware that:
A) Windows 98 has enough x86 assembly that it's pretty much non-portable as it stands.
B) Microsoft had already ported Windows NT to PowerPC -- the lack of Mac support was purely a political issue.
These guys are total clowns -- Note how they post a story, Slashdot links to it, and then they post the Slashdot link as "confirmation" of their story. WTF?
If anything, their site is a good way to check what misinformation Apple is spreading (Settop box prototypes right before the iMac launch, for example. Whoops -- if they had acutally be reading their own rumors, they would realize that the settop box was the well known and cancelled Pippen project.) What reliable information they do print, they get from other sites such as www.appleinsider.com.
--
I was making the assumption that "new app" wouldn't be 3270-based. Of course, in some cases it will be, in which case use your existing SNA or twinax or whatever.
In most cases, a TCP/IP network won't be a "new network" -- it's already been paid for, and if WWW browser clients are acceptable, they've already been deployed. Which puts an intranet application on equal footing as a SNA/3270 terminal app deployment-wise, and probably with significantly lower training cost.
--
WinWP 5.1 was advertised as WYSIWYG. I really ought to go download a eval of WP 8 or 9, because on further reflection it's unfair to comment on a 7 year old version of the software. They may well have solved the "dangling tags" problem to my satisfaction.
But like you say -- different strokes for different folks.
--
Like I said -- "Legacy" -- Not good enough to deploy more of, but good enough not to replace. Hopefully there aren't any *new* applications being rolled out that require SNA on the client or a gateway box.
Customers who still rely on OS/2 for this purpose would probably love to have the source code.
--
I'm not going to flame you -- OS/2 is an OK system, not great. It's lacking even when compared to WinNT in certain departments.
However you have to understand is that one reason banks use(d) OS/2 extensively is because IBM tied a bunch of mainframe SNA freindly applications in with the OS in the early days. Back in the old days, this was considered quite a feature because it allowed you to do client-server stuff with your mainframes. It also gave a lot of people the feeling that IBM wanted to turn your personal computer into a 5250 terminal, and wanted to crush the PC Server market to protect their profit margins.
Now that IBM big iron talks TCP/IP, HTTP, ODBC, JDBC, XML and so on, and even runs Linux in a VM, why would anyone bother with a SNA-based client application? And without the special application support, why bother with the 'deviant' OS? (to quote an old dilbert strip)
I hate to say it, but at this point OS/2 is essentialy 'legacy' (which means that if it's working, don't replace it). They really ought to release the source and let the people who really care take a crack at it.
--
Word includes a PageMaker-like drag+drop interface (that is too retarded to be worthwhile) -- this replaces the old Word v4/5/6/95 'frames' option (also totally broken).
If your documents are complex enough to need this feature, I'd suggest getting a program that can really handle the job.
(While on this topic -- have you noticed how totally braindead Word's drawing tools are? The sad thing is that when I got Mac Word v4.0 as a student many years ago (for $35), it came with a free copy of "SuperPaint". SuperPaint kicks Word 9's sorry drawing tool's ass from here to Sunday, and it's a 10 year old program.)
--
Word could never have "Reveal Codes" because there are no 'codes' in Word -- every style is a property of either a character or a paragraph object. Show Paragraph Symbol let you see where paragraphs begin and end, if it's non-obvious in your document, you can also show the style name to the left of the text.
This, IMO, is the Right Way to design a GUI word processor.
I had the same experence as you using WordPerfect for Windows (5.1 and 6 - it might have changed by now) -- deleting a block of text would turn my whole document into 24 pt Bold text, just because I accidentially deleted the </B> <FONT> 'code' which had stupidly wrapped paragraphs. WP is only usable with "Reveal Codes" on, which is hardly WYSIWYG -- you might as well just write HTML.
I guess I had the opposite e
--
When Win95 was released, IBM said that if they had source code access (as they did with Win 3.x), it wouldn't be a problem to get it running on WinOS2.
I don't know if IBM would bother at this point, but it would be nice if Microsoft allowed a source release of the versions of OS/2 it co-owns (v2.0 and below). This would allow IBM to open source most or all of the later versions.
--
Finally, people have been thumping the Netware is dead drum for years!
You might be surprised at how many Netware servers have been in production for more than five years in small offices
The reason Novell is "dead" is right in your comment -- a huge portion of the customer base never upgraded from 3.x, meaning Novell has to survive on mimimal revenue. Cheers to NW 3.x, I guess.
--
Have you ever looked inside of the box of a new consumer computer? It contains a giant poster explaining how to plug everything in. Note that all of the plugs are also now color coded.
Why? Because plugging everything in is a major source of support phone calls.
--