And I would guess that software counts for a majority of Apple's R&D expenses. Especially when you consider all of the holes they've poured money into over the years (Taligent, Copeland, OpenDoc, QuickDrawGX...)
Well, last year I saw a voice mail system running Microsoft OS/2 1.3 - The technician indicated that there was some problem with later versions so they buy it from Microsoft for $600 a box.
I would imagine that ATM manufacturers have enough resources to engineer around the 16-bit to 32-bit OS/2 issues, especially because vendor support is probably critical in this area, so maybe the issue isn't as general as I made it out to be.
Quite happy to admit Win3.x was crap, and move to NT
Actually, my understanding was that the original plan for Windows NT was to have a cleaned-up OS/2 Presentation Manager interface. MS Brass mandated the Win 3.1 UI, an acknowledged piece of crap. The same thing happened with Win95 and NT4 and with the IE4 'ActiveDesktop' fiasco -- the supposedly more modern operating system got a shell transplanted from DOS/Windows without much thought given to stability issues, etc.
I didn't mean to imply that Dvorak is in MS's pocket. He used to write quite a bit about Amiga and OS/2 happenings, for example. He also wrote for a Mac magazine for many years.
Nope. Furthermore the number of NT admins who appear unaware of the "Boost Foreground Priority" slider seems amazingly high.
Another classic NT Server default is the setting which hides all those scary DLLs and file extensions from the explorer. Those can sure confuse system admins.
Well, it's not just ads from Microsoft, but every other Windows software vendor that wants to take advantage of the Win2000 launch and the opportunity that that creates to get your product on Win2000 desktops. It's in ZD's best interest to hype up Win2000 as much as possible because that's what puts bread on their table (at least in the short term). At least much more bread than Linux ads would.
They only way for Linux to combat this is to have a thriving commercial software market that buys lots of ads,
Six months ago, this wasn't true. They wrote alot about Linux simply because writing about some pre-beta of Win2000 doesn't sell too many magazines. (As a reference, go back and look at the OS/2 coverage during the Win95 waiting period.)
Ironically, as Microsoft monopolizes more and more of the client software market, the number of advertisers and advertisements starts to fall. For example, there probably were many more office suite ads back in the day when WordPerfect and Lotus had a chance. Of course, as competitors fall, Microsoft ends up buying an increasing percentage of ad pages, giving them more leverage.
Step 2: Spend the next couple of years migrating or converting core server apps (IIS, Exchange, Active Directory) to the Unix-like side, in some cases replacing them with customized, MS-branded versions of Apache, OpenLDAP, etc. Elevate this layer to full parity with Win32 from a support standpoint.
Even if porting 'BackOffice' to *nix was techinically feasible, it would involve Microsoft essentially admitting Windows is a POS and giving up. Bill Gates would probably rather lose all of his money and become a drunk hobo before he gives up on the vision of "Windows Everywhere".
Your Step 1 is more likely. This will show up as a "Unix Migration Kit" and will be aimed at customers with older unix setups. (just like Microsoft has done for any other competitive server product - NetWare, Lotus Notes, Oracle, etc.)
Don't forget that Compaq has been the leader in PC x86 servers for sometime, and that still is the real profit center for the company. Especially with Dell kicking their ass on the desktop. (Maybe some of you don't an 8-way Xeon to be a *real* servers, oh well,)
After spending a ton of money on Intel IA32 and IA64 stuf, buying Tandem and DEC, it would be very bizarre to drop out of the 'server' market. Without it, they're just another Gateway 2000.
Lots of people were worried for years that DEC was going out of business. Naturally this scared them away from DEC products.
Even after Compaq bought them out, there many questions surrounding their commitment to the Alpha platform, to Unix (instead of NT on Merced), and especially to VMS. Both Sun and IBM stole an enormous number of DEC customers over the last few years.
OK, for years we've been hearing about this wonderful IA64 architecture, and that it's going to be the be-all and end-all of CPUs. Naturally, you hear a lot about Microsoft promising 64-bit support, "shipping on the same day as Merced", and how Merced is a critical product for them to scale NT up and invade the datacenter. Of course, this is to be expected, because Microsoft and it's customers are pretty much stuck Intel platforms, so this would be a natural move (especially with the IA32 compatibility built into merced).
But at the same time, you have the big UNIX vendors (Sun, HP, IBM, DEC/Compaq) announcing that they too are also going to support Merced. Which is odd because these vendors make their own hardware and CPUs. I have to admit that I'm confused at the strategy, which on it's face seems to bolster WinTel.
Are the UNIX companies using IA64 to slowly get out of the CPU business? or the hardware business in general? That would be an odd strategy because right now they're making most of their money off hardware, and that's where the main differentiation is right now.
What happens when ZDNet benchmarks all of the commercial Unixes on some Dell PowerEdge? Does Vendor X really want their customers to see that they are 7% slower than Vendor Y on the same hardware? Or are they going to lock it down so that Vendor X Unix only runs on Vendor X Merced hardware. If so, what's the point?
Maybe Compaq/DEC is the first company that figured out that Unix-on-Merced is a loser strategy, and there's more money to be made with their own CPUs and hardware. (You have to figure Compaq would know - they are certainly going to be the premire IA64 hardware vendor for the Windows folks.)
The MacOS-on-x86 project was a demonstration project by the 68K emulator folks to prove that they could move the MacOS over to a new CPU without rewriting it. This sort of work helped them make the 68000 to PowerPC transition very smoothly.
I don't think there were ever serious plans to sell MacOS/i386. Not only was the market already crowded with Windows and OS/2, the video quality from your typical 1991 PC was horrible relative to Macintoshes.
It should be noted that OS/2 1.x (1987?) was designed to run on the 286 and was 16-bit, and that 32-bit support didn't come in until 1990 with OS/2 2.0. By then, I'm sure someone (SCO?) was selling a i386 Unix.
During the 2.x and 3.x era, there still was 16-bit code in OS/2. I don't know about today.
I'm curious why you think the MacOS 8.x UI is a rip-off from OS/2? Especially since, aside from some window dressing, the MacOS UI has been pretty static since 1984.
Could it be the contextual menus? OS/2 didn't invent those - they were in the Xerox PARC GUI, and I think Apple Lisa and early Unix UIs might have had them as well.
Right. It should be noted that the OS/2 kernel is riddled with so much i286 and i386 assembly code that it's apparently unportable. (IBM tried porting to the PPC but never got out of beta.)
NT was designed to be the solution to that problem. See the/. article from a few weeks ago.
(Note that NT has lots of OS/2 code in other places, specifically the file+print sharing LanMan code.)
IBM marketed OS/2 heavily to IBM mainframe shops. One of the big sells of the "extended edition" (which only ran on authentic IBM PS/2s, IIRC) was that it included terminal emulation software.
OS/2 always was (and probably still is) the mainframe gateway OS of choice. What they (and the PC hardware guys) never really caught onto was that there was a huge market out there for running network applications on PC server hardware. Enter Compaq and Windows NT.
The font thing always annoyed the hell out of me. What's the point in having a 1024x768 monitor, if all the dialog boxes had 36 point fonts and took up the same third of the screen they would have under 640x480?
From what I saw of Warp 4, it looks like IBM finally cleaned the PM up quite a bit. For those of us who were there in the 2.x era, Presentation Manager was one of the ugliest and confusing GUIs ever invented (and, yes, that does include Windows 3!).
For example, OS/2 2.x shipped without icons for many PM programs. Which means you had to launch them from a command shell. OK, except the command shell icons were buried about 3 folders deep some place.
And here's another for those who think that dragging a floppy to the trash is confusing: How about right-clicking on the desktop to shut down? In this context a 'Start' menu starts to make sense.
Sorry to be ranting, but all of this talk of the "powerfullness" of PM is kinda moot because for many years the uglyness of it was getting in right in your face. (And yes, I know that there were some wonderful $50 shareware improvements. Tell that to the people who were paying the client licences.)
My understanding is that the version of OS/2 being used for many embedded applications such as ATMs is actually Microsoft OS/2 1.x. (The reason being that the application was designed for 16-bit OS/2 1.x and only MS still sells that version. And yes Microsoft actually does still sell OS/2 if you can find the right person.)
Don't forget that OS/2 was the *only* modern operating system available for PC hardware in the late-80s and early-90s. Thus it got 'designed in' to certain applications in that period. (It's also why you can find old OS/2 386 machines running mainframe gateways and the like in the corners of server rooms around the world.)
I would think that the installer would be a important item that needs beta tested. If so, it would only make sense to get users that want Linux and Windows to co-exist on the same machine. (A bare drive install being somewhat of a no-brainer.)
I thought MacIE did ActiveX (it certainly does OLE with Office) -- only that since ActiveX is binary, the objects need to be mac-specific or -urk- ActiveX coded in Java.
(This knowledge comes from hitting a Microsoft web page long ago on my IIfx and watching IE3 unexpectedly quit.)
Well, the big problem right now is that the MacOS isn't even completely PPC-native. First things first, which is MacOSX.
I'm not aware of the issues surrounding a 64-bit version of OSX, but considering that NextStep ran on a number of platforms, and it's Mach and Unix-based, it's probably pretty portable.
Don't forget that Apple is a consumer company, and that a 64-bit port right now would be worthless if it only ran on obscure RS6000s and the application vendors (Adobe) decided not to port. However, I would imagine that Apple would have to have 64-bit hardware out in the Merced timeframe (01-02) just to keep their high end market happy.
Slashdot Mirror
Software accounts for 5% of Apple's total revenue
And I would guess that software counts for a majority of Apple's R&D expenses. Especially when you consider all of the holes they've poured money into over the years (Taligent, Copeland, OpenDoc, QuickDrawGX...)
Well, last year I saw a voice mail system running Microsoft OS/2 1.3 - The technician indicated that there was some problem with later versions so they buy it from Microsoft for $600 a box.
I would imagine that ATM manufacturers have enough resources to engineer around the 16-bit to 32-bit OS/2 issues, especially because vendor support is probably critical in this area, so maybe the issue isn't as general as I made it out to be.
Quite happy to admit Win3.x was crap, and move to NT
Actually, my understanding was that the original plan for Windows NT was to have a cleaned-up OS/2 Presentation Manager interface. MS Brass mandated the Win 3.1 UI, an acknowledged piece of crap. The same thing happened with Win95 and NT4 and with the IE4 'ActiveDesktop' fiasco -- the supposedly more modern operating system got a shell transplanted from DOS/Windows without much thought given to stability issues, etc.
I didn't mean to imply that Dvorak is in MS's pocket. He used to write quite a bit about Amiga and OS/2 happenings, for example. He also wrote for a Mac magazine for many years.
Nope. Furthermore the number of NT admins who appear unaware of the "Boost Foreground Priority" slider seems amazingly high.
Another classic NT Server default is the setting which hides all those scary DLLs and file extensions from the explorer. Those can sure confuse system admins.
Well, it's not just ads from Microsoft, but every other Windows software vendor that wants to take advantage of the Win2000 launch and the opportunity that that creates to get your product on Win2000 desktops. It's in ZD's best interest to hype up Win2000 as much as possible because that's what puts bread on their table (at least in the short term). At least much more bread than Linux ads would.
They only way for Linux to combat this is to have a thriving commercial software market that buys lots of ads,
Six months ago, this wasn't true. They wrote alot about Linux simply because writing about some pre-beta of Win2000 doesn't sell too many magazines. (As a reference, go back and look at the OS/2 coverage during the Win95 waiting period.)
Ironically, as Microsoft monopolizes more and more of the client software market, the number of advertisers and advertisements starts to fall. For example, there probably were many more office suite ads back in the day when WordPerfect and Lotus had a chance. Of course, as competitors fall, Microsoft ends up buying an increasing percentage of ad pages, giving them more leverage.
Step 2: Spend the next couple of years migrating or converting core server apps (IIS, Exchange, Active Directory) to the Unix-like side, in some cases replacing them with customized, MS-branded versions of Apache, OpenLDAP, etc. Elevate this layer to full parity with Win32 from a support standpoint.
Even if porting 'BackOffice' to *nix was techinically feasible, it would involve Microsoft essentially admitting Windows is a POS and giving up. Bill Gates would probably rather lose all of his money and become a drunk hobo before he gives up on the vision of "Windows Everywhere".
Your Step 1 is more likely. This will show up as a "Unix Migration Kit" and will be aimed at customers with older unix setups. (just like Microsoft has done for any other competitive server product - NetWare, Lotus Notes, Oracle, etc.)
Don't forget that Compaq has been the leader in PC x86 servers for sometime, and that still is the real profit center for the company. Especially with Dell kicking their ass on the desktop. (Maybe some of you don't an 8-way Xeon to be a *real* servers, oh well,)
After spending a ton of money on Intel IA32 and IA64 stuf, buying Tandem and DEC, it would be very bizarre to drop out of the 'server' market. Without it, they're just another Gateway 2000.
Lots of people were worried for years that DEC was going out of business. Naturally this scared them away from DEC products.
Even after Compaq bought them out, there many questions surrounding their commitment to the Alpha platform, to Unix (instead of NT on Merced), and especially to VMS. Both Sun and IBM stole an enormous number of DEC customers over the last few years.
OK, for years we've been hearing about this wonderful IA64 architecture, and that it's going to be the be-all and end-all of CPUs. Naturally, you hear a lot about Microsoft promising 64-bit support, "shipping on the same day as Merced", and how Merced is a critical product for them to scale NT up and invade the datacenter. Of course, this is to be expected, because Microsoft and it's customers are pretty much stuck Intel platforms, so this would be a natural move (especially with the IA32 compatibility built into merced).
But at the same time, you have the big UNIX vendors (Sun, HP, IBM, DEC/Compaq) announcing that they too are also going to support Merced. Which is odd because these vendors make their own hardware and CPUs. I have to admit that I'm confused at the strategy, which on it's face seems to bolster WinTel.
Are the UNIX companies using IA64 to slowly get out of the CPU business? or the hardware business in general? That would be an odd strategy because right now they're making most of their money off hardware, and that's where the main differentiation is right now.
What happens when ZDNet benchmarks all of the commercial Unixes on some Dell PowerEdge? Does Vendor X really want their customers to see that they are 7% slower than Vendor Y on the same hardware? Or are they going to lock it down so that Vendor X Unix only runs on Vendor X Merced hardware. If so, what's the point?
Maybe Compaq/DEC is the first company that figured out that Unix-on-Merced is a loser strategy, and there's more money to be made with their own CPUs and hardware. (You have to figure Compaq would know - they are certainly going to be the premire IA64 hardware vendor for the Windows folks.)
The MacOS-on-x86 project was a demonstration project by the 68K emulator folks to prove that they could move the MacOS over to a new CPU without rewriting it. This sort of work helped them make the 68000 to PowerPC transition very smoothly.
I don't think there were ever serious plans to sell MacOS/i386. Not only was the market already crowded with Windows and OS/2, the video quality from your typical 1991 PC was horrible relative to Macintoshes.
It should be noted that OS/2 1.x (1987?) was designed to run on the 286 and was 16-bit, and that 32-bit support didn't come in until 1990 with OS/2 2.0. By then, I'm sure someone (SCO?) was selling a i386 Unix.
During the 2.x and 3.x era, there still was 16-bit code in OS/2. I don't know about today.
Actually, it's a rule that the deader a system gets, the higher it's consultant rates go up.
Look at the undercutting Windows NT consultants. The price of popularity is cheap labor.
I'm curious why you think the MacOS 8.x UI is a rip-off from OS/2? Especially since, aside from some window dressing, the MacOS UI has been pretty static since 1984.
Could it be the contextual menus? OS/2 didn't invent those - they were in the Xerox PARC GUI, and I think Apple Lisa and early Unix UIs might have had them as well.
Right. It should be noted that the OS/2 kernel is riddled with so much i286 and i386 assembly code that it's apparently unportable. (IBM tried porting to the PPC but never got out of beta.)
NT was designed to be the solution to that problem. See the
(Note that NT has lots of OS/2 code in other places, specifically the file+print sharing LanMan code.)
IBM marketed OS/2 heavily to IBM mainframe shops. One of the big sells of the "extended edition" (which only ran on authentic IBM PS/2s, IIRC) was that it included terminal emulation software.
OS/2 always was (and probably still is) the mainframe gateway OS of choice. What they (and the PC hardware guys) never really caught onto was that there was a huge market out there for running network applications on PC server hardware. Enter Compaq and Windows NT.
The font thing always annoyed the hell out of me. What's the point in having a 1024x768 monitor, if all the dialog boxes had 36 point fonts and took up the same third of the screen they would have under 640x480?
From what I saw of Warp 4, it looks like IBM finally cleaned the PM up quite a bit. For those of us who were there in the 2.x era, Presentation Manager was one of the ugliest and confusing GUIs ever invented (and, yes, that does include Windows 3!).
For example, OS/2 2.x shipped without icons for many PM programs. Which means you had to launch them from a command shell. OK, except the command shell icons were buried about 3 folders deep some place.
And here's another for those who think that dragging a floppy to the trash is confusing: How about right-clicking on the desktop to shut down? In this context a 'Start' menu starts to make sense.
Sorry to be ranting, but all of this talk of the "powerfullness" of PM is kinda moot because for many years the uglyness of it was getting in right in your face. (And yes, I know that there were some wonderful $50 shareware improvements. Tell that to the people who were paying the client licences.)
My understanding is that the version of OS/2 being used for many embedded applications such as ATMs is actually Microsoft OS/2 1.x. (The reason being that the application was designed for 16-bit OS/2 1.x and only MS still sells that version. And yes Microsoft actually does still sell OS/2 if you can find the right person.)
Don't forget that OS/2 was the *only* modern operating system available for PC hardware in the late-80s and early-90s. Thus it got 'designed in' to certain applications in that period. (It's also why you can find old OS/2 386 machines running mainframe gateways and the like in the corners of server rooms around the world.)
[1] It seems to use the same type of shell as NT..i.e. a command shell.
I would guess that it goes beyond being the same 'type' of shell, and that CMD.EXE is based on the same OS/2 code for both Warp and NT.
SOMObjects is part of OpenDoc, which even though development has froze, is still in the MacOS.
That sort of association has probably ruined you sexually for life.
I would think that the installer would be a important item that needs beta tested. If so, it would only make sense to get users that want Linux and Windows to co-exist on the same machine. (A bare drive install being somewhat of a no-brainer.)
I thought MacIE did ActiveX (it certainly does OLE with Office) -- only that since ActiveX is binary, the objects need to be mac-specific or -urk- ActiveX coded in Java.
(This knowledge comes from hitting a Microsoft web page long ago on my IIfx and watching IE3 unexpectedly quit.)
Well, the big problem right now is that the MacOS isn't even completely PPC-native. First things first, which is MacOSX.
I'm not aware of the issues surrounding a 64-bit version of OSX, but considering that NextStep ran on a number of platforms, and it's Mach and Unix-based, it's probably pretty portable.
Don't forget that Apple is a consumer company, and that a 64-bit port right now would be worthless if it only ran on obscure RS6000s and the application vendors (Adobe) decided not to port. However, I would imagine that Apple would have to have 64-bit hardware out in the Merced timeframe (01-02) just to keep their high end market happy.
My understanding is that IBM/Moto added a few instructions to the PPC specifically to help MacOS along. This was a few years ago in the 603/604 era.
This is all from vauge memory, so feel free to abuse me if it's wrong.