Before you start using ALL CAPITALS, you may want to educate yourself a little. There are no codepages on the Mac. And no, Office for OS X is not a port of Office for Windows. The two products share only two things, name (for branding) and file format. They are done by two entirely different groups located at different location.
Microsoft wasted thousand of man-hours porting IE and Office to OS X from OS 9. IE was available to beta versions of OS X 10.0. Development of Office started long before OS X 10.0 was released. Microsoft had to redo many things to work around bugs in the prereleases of OS X, as well as when Apple changed the underlying code. Microsoft had advanced knowledge of the features in OS X 10.1. They knew it would not have support for Hebrew and Arabic. They had no knowledge of when Apple was going to support them. Yes, Microsoft could have hacked their own support of Hebrew and Arabic. But they knew they would have to redo it when Apple provided support. It would have been a waste of engineering resources.
Apple had support for Hebrew and Arabic in OS 9. They did not have support in OS 10.0 and 10.1. It was Apple who removed the support. Not Microsoft.
Instead of relying on a Steve Jobs interview in Rolling Stone what about going to the source ( HP Q4). Fiorina was so proud that ALL divisions of HP were profitable. Aparently you missed that.
Of course for adoption, being profitable is totally irrelevant. Volume is the important thing.
As for users of previous formats, ask yourself what happend to Apple's users who bought DVD-RAM with their G4.
It was Apple who did not provide support for Hebrew and Arabic and a lot of other languages in OS X 10.0. The first version of Office for OS X targeted OS X 10.1 which did not have support for Hebrew and Arabic. 10.1 was released 9/25/2001. Office X was released 11/19/2001. It wasn't before Apple release OS X 10.2 (8/26/2002) that the OS had support for Hebrew and Arabic. There is no reason to believe this is more than an engineering decision. Delay support for a feature until the OS supports it. I would be surprised if the next version of Office for the Mac does not support Hebrew and Arabic. Yes, I know it is fun to blame Microsoft for everything. However in this case, if you want to blame anyone, it should be Apple.
The original iMac did not have Firewire or wireless networking.
In terms of extensibility, the iMac was and still is way below the industry standard. The industry has no desire to follow Apple.
Take a look at your computer (hardware). What exactly did Apple invent? Hardly anything. Firewire being an exception. What box make was first with a certain feature, I find it irrelevant. If you sell a computer at prices significant higher than the industry average, you can of course include more features. Just like Mercedes can include more features.
Here are some examples of Apple playing catch-up.
USB-1, Dell shipped USB in their Dimension line more than 9 months before Apple introduced the iMac.
Firewire, Sony shipped computers with Firewire (iLink) more than a year before Apple.
Portable computers. Apple was late to the game. The first portable was a joke because of its weight.
First portable computer less than one inch. Toshiba's Portege 2000 is just 0.6" thick. Apple has yet to ship such a product.
USB-2, Apple late by more than a year.
PCI cards, Apple late by more than a year.
Wireless keyboard and mouse, Apple late by more than a year. Even Microsoft beat Apple.
Wireless networking, Apple wasn't even the first to have a solution for their own computers. Of course wireless computing has been around since the early nineties.
CD-burner, even Steve Jobs admitted that Apple missed the boat on that one.
Memory architecture, in general Apple has been behind the PC industry by a generation.
CD speed, in general Apple has been behind the PC industry be more than a generation.
Hard drive speed, in general Apple has been behind the PC industry.
Easy access to hardware. I can install a new PCI card in my Dell without using any tools. In my G4 I need a Philips screwdriver.
CPU with DSP instructions. When Intel introduced MMX, Apple's claim was that they didn't need that because they were using a RISC processor. When Apple eventually caught up with
Altivec, it, of course, claimed it to be superior although it lacks double-precision floating-point support.
Personally I find the whole debate irrelevant. Who is the most innovative car manufacturer? Who was the first with four-wheel drive on command? Who was the first with air-bags or ABS? Do you know? Do you care?
It was Apple who did not provide support for Hebrew and Arabic and a lot of other languages in OS X 10.0. The first version of Office for OS X targeted OS X 10.1 which did not have support for Hebrew and Arabic. 10.1 was released 9/25/2001. Office X was released 11/19/2001.
It wasn't before Apple release OS X 10.2 (8/26/2002) that the OS had support for Hebrew and Arabic. There is no reason to believe this is more than an engineering decision. Delay support for a feature until the OS supports it. I would be surprised if the next version of Office for the Mac does not support Hebrew and Arabic.
Yes, I know it is fun to blame Microsoft for everything. However in this case, if you want to blame anyone, it should be Apple.
Here are some quotes from TCatB (October '99).
"Microsoft will not have an enterprise ready operating system, because Windows 2000 will not ship in a useable form. (At 60 million lines of code and still bloating, its development is out of control.)"
"Windows 2000 will be either canceled or dead on arrival. Either way it will turn into a horrendous train wreck, the worst strategic disaster in Microsoft's history."
"the most likely scenario for late 2000/early 2001 has Linux in effective control of servers, data centers, ISPs, and the Internet,..."
Raymond is a true visionary. He can almost see beyond his own nose. Why anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.
We have software patents in the US and have had it for many years. I'm not aware of any case where Microsoft or any other big company is trying to shutdown an Open Source project using patent laws. The claim that "with patent law allowed, the floodgates would be opened and Linux distributors swamped and bankrupted by court claims - with Microsoft leading the charge." is baseless.
Conveniently you leave out the fact that the 68k emulator did not support floating-point instructions. At a time when Apple were shipping computers with MC68040 (which has a build-in FPU) they emulated the MC68020, a two generation older processor. Programs like Mathematica that took advantage of the floating-point instructions simply crash in the emulator.
How many programs broke when Apple introduced Jaguar? How many do you think will break with Panther?
Is gcc compliant with the C++ Standard, ISO/IEC 14882? I don't think so. Does the IJG's JPEG library fully implement CCITT T.81. I don't think so.
Who determines whether a piece of software is compliant. For something like C++ there is no process in place.
Well take a look at http://www.macintouch.com/mosxreaderreports.html.
The number of people having problems after installing an Apple patch is very large.
Blinding trusting a vendor is a recipe for disaster. When did Apple start signing their patches? Enough said.
Do a Google search on ZapMedia and Linux and you will see that there are already Linux boxes shipping supporting Windows Media. Microsoft even ported their DRM to Linux.
Microsoft is one of the companies that helped making the MPEG-4 standard. Indeed, they are one of the patent holders of the video part (http://www.mpegla.com/mpeg4v/m4v_patentlist.html) . So, they make mony either way.
Of course many people beleive WMP9 video is superior to MPEG-4. Microsoft continued development a couple of years past the MPEG group.
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Before you start using ALL CAPITALS, you may want to educate yourself a little. There are no codepages on the Mac. And no, Office for OS X is not a port of Office for Windows. The two products share only two things, name (for branding) and file format. They are done by two entirely different groups located at different location.
Microsoft wasted thousand of man-hours porting IE and Office to OS X from OS 9. IE was available to beta versions of OS X 10.0. Development of Office started long before OS X 10.0 was released. Microsoft had to redo many things to work around bugs in the prereleases of OS X, as well as when Apple changed the underlying code. Microsoft had advanced knowledge of the features in OS X 10.1. They knew it would not have support for Hebrew and Arabic. They had no knowledge of when Apple was going to support them. Yes, Microsoft could have hacked their own support of Hebrew and Arabic. But they knew they would have to redo it when Apple provided support. It would have been a waste of engineering resources.
Apple had support for Hebrew and Arabic in OS 9. They did not have support in OS 10.0 and 10.1. It was Apple who removed the support. Not Microsoft.
Instead of relying on a Steve Jobs interview in Rolling Stone what about going to the source ( HP Q4). Fiorina was so proud that ALL divisions of HP were profitable. Aparently you missed that.
Of course for adoption, being profitable is totally irrelevant. Volume is the important thing.
As for users of previous formats, ask yourself what happend to Apple's users who bought DVD-RAM with their G4.
It was Apple who did not provide support for Hebrew and Arabic and a lot of other languages in OS X 10.0. The first version of Office for OS X targeted OS X 10.1 which did not have support for Hebrew and Arabic. 10.1 was released 9/25/2001. Office X was released 11/19/2001. It wasn't before Apple release OS X 10.2 (8/26/2002) that the OS had support for Hebrew and Arabic. There is no reason to believe this is more than an engineering decision. Delay support for a feature until the OS supports it. I would be surprised if the next version of Office for the Mac does not support Hebrew and Arabic. Yes, I know it is fun to blame Microsoft for everything. However in this case, if you want to blame anyone, it should be Apple.
The original iMac did not have Firewire or wireless networking. In terms of extensibility, the iMac was and still is way below the industry standard. The industry has no desire to follow Apple.
Take a look at your computer (hardware). What exactly did Apple invent? Hardly anything. Firewire being an exception. What box make was first with a certain feature, I find it irrelevant. If you sell a computer at prices significant higher than the industry average, you can of course include more features. Just like Mercedes can include more features.
Here are some examples of Apple playing catch-up.
USB-1, Dell shipped USB in their Dimension line more than 9 months before Apple introduced the iMac.
Firewire, Sony shipped computers with Firewire (iLink) more than a year before Apple.
Portable computers. Apple was late to the game. The first portable was a joke because of its weight.
First portable computer less than one inch. Toshiba's Portege 2000 is just 0.6" thick. Apple has yet to ship such a product.
USB-2, Apple late by more than a year.
PCI cards, Apple late by more than a year.
Wireless keyboard and mouse, Apple late by more than a year. Even Microsoft beat Apple.
Wireless networking, Apple wasn't even the first to have a solution for their own computers. Of course wireless computing has been around since the early nineties.
CD-burner, even Steve Jobs admitted that Apple missed the boat on that one.
Memory architecture, in general Apple has been behind the PC industry by a generation.
CD speed, in general Apple has been behind the PC industry be more than a generation.
Hard drive speed, in general Apple has been behind the PC industry.
Easy access to hardware. I can install a new PCI card in my Dell without using any tools. In my G4 I need a Philips screwdriver.
CPU with DSP instructions. When Intel introduced MMX, Apple's claim was that they didn't need that because they were using a RISC processor. When Apple eventually caught up with Altivec, it, of course, claimed it to be superior although it lacks double-precision floating-point support.
Personally I find the whole debate irrelevant. Who is the most innovative car manufacturer? Who was the first with four-wheel drive on command? Who was the first with air-bags or ABS? Do you know? Do you care?
It was Apple who did not provide support for Hebrew and Arabic and a lot of other languages in OS X 10.0. The first version of Office for OS X targeted OS X 10.1 which did not have support for Hebrew and Arabic. 10.1 was released 9/25/2001. Office X was released 11/19/2001. It wasn't before Apple release OS X 10.2 (8/26/2002) that the OS had support for Hebrew and Arabic. There is no reason to believe this is more than an engineering decision. Delay support for a feature until the OS supports it. I would be surprised if the next version of Office for the Mac does not support Hebrew and Arabic. Yes, I know it is fun to blame Microsoft for everything. However in this case, if you want to blame anyone, it should be Apple.
Take a look at MMA 5.x timings.
The G5 loses 14 out of 15 tests to the Opteron. Moreover, the G5 loses to the Athlon 2800+ and the Pentium 3 GHz.
Here are some quotes from TCatB (October '99). ..."
"Microsoft will not have an enterprise ready operating system, because Windows 2000 will not ship in a useable form. (At 60 million lines of code and still bloating, its development is out of control.)"
"Windows 2000 will be either canceled or dead on arrival. Either way it will turn into a horrendous train wreck, the worst strategic disaster in Microsoft's history."
"the most likely scenario for late 2000/early 2001 has Linux in effective control of servers, data centers, ISPs, and the Internet,
Raymond is a true visionary. He can almost see beyond his own nose. Why anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.
We have software patents in the US and have had it for many years. I'm not aware of any case where Microsoft or any other big company is trying to shutdown an Open Source project using patent laws. The claim that "with patent law allowed, the floodgates would be opened and Linux distributors swamped and bankrupted by court claims - with Microsoft leading the charge." is baseless.
Conveniently you leave out the fact that the 68k emulator did not support floating-point instructions. At a time when Apple were shipping computers with MC68040 (which has a build-in FPU) they emulated the MC68020, a two generation older processor. Programs like Mathematica that took advantage of the floating-point instructions simply crash in the emulator. How many programs broke when Apple introduced Jaguar? How many do you think will break with Panther?
Is gcc compliant with the C++ Standard, ISO/IEC 14882? I don't think so. Does the IJG's JPEG library fully implement CCITT T.81. I don't think so. Who determines whether a piece of software is compliant. For something like C++ there is no process in place.
Well take a look at http://www.macintouch.com/mosxreaderreports.html. The number of people having problems after installing an Apple patch is very large. Blinding trusting a vendor is a recipe for disaster. When did Apple start signing their patches? Enough said.
Do a Google search on ZapMedia and Linux and you will see that there are already Linux boxes shipping supporting Windows Media. Microsoft even ported their DRM to Linux.
Microsoft is one of the companies that helped making the MPEG-4 standard. Indeed, they are one of the patent holders of the video part (http://www.mpegla.com/mpeg4v/m4v_patentlist.html) . So, they make mony either way.
Of course many people beleive WMP9 video is superior to MPEG-4. Microsoft continued development a couple of years past the MPEG group.