Re: Apple's ways

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"william strutts" <wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com> wrote:

>Didn't Motorolla and Apple have a falling out of sorts a couple
>years ago over the future of its chips? I seem to recall that
>Motorolla threatened to abandon the PowerPC because
>it was mad at Apple over the cloning fiasco.

You remember correctly.  When the PowerPC project was
conceived, Apple, IBM, and Motorola were supposed to be
equal partners.  All three eventually made computers that
were based on the PowerPC chip.  Then Apple allowed
Motorola and some Mac "clones" to run MacOS.  Then
CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) was going
to be the next step which would integrate all the different
hardware makers.

Well, Motorola got to build Mac clones for about a year.
It actually did come out with CHRP computers as did
IBM (but IBM's never got to run MacOS).  Then Apple
panicked and called it quits.  It didn't want to share.

You have to wonder.  Mac users still actually think that
IBM was and continues to be hurt by clones.  In fact,
IBM's Aptivas (their current PCs) sell like never before.
It may be true that IBM has to share the market with
clones but thanks to clones, the market has expanded
many many times faster and that expansion has more
than made up for sharing the market.

IBM can sell premium PCs these days and people will
buy them and benefit from the huge installed user base
shared with folks who bought less expensive clones.
That's why PC users have so much hardware and
software to choose from at such good prices.  Apple
sells ONLY at premium prices but it doesn't have the
bargain clones to expand the Mac platform's user base
and thus has a harder time attracting third parties to
make and sell software and hardware at a good price.