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Re: Amelio's ouster

> 
> >  Fine; but, does Apple have Microsoft's permission to introduce a new
> > OS?
> 
> Was that a joke (I hope)? Since when does anyone need Microsoft's
> permission to put an OS on an Intel box? Tell that to the makers of
> OS/2, Linux, OpenStep, etc.

  Actually, it is far from a joke, unfortunately. Think about it.
Microsoft is the largest software house in the world, and probably more
people know about Microsoft and Bill Gates than any other
computer/software company (well, except most people over the age of 20
know the name Apple Computer)

  Microsoft has MS Office, probably the best selling suite of office
software around right now. If you're not one of the 'obscure people'
using WordPerfect, you most likely use Word (excuse the term 'obscure',
I'm being slighly sarcastic there).

  More or less a big purchasing decision of many users is whether or not
they can get Office or at least Word on their new computer. Macintosh is
lucky that they get Word and Powerpoint on their systems. MS's code for
Word (amongst others) is NOT 90% portable, nor is it even 70% (possibly
60%?). This means LOTS of money into development for a particular
platform, and if they don't think they're going to make a big profit on
the conversion, they won't do it. No Office, no simple users.

  Take the Amiga for example. It did fine for many years because there
was a fanatic following for the machine. However, Microsoft only made
one version of Microsoft Basic for the machine (Amiga Basic, which
didn't even run on later machines). In the early 90's, many companies
wouldn't consider it for businesses because that brand name Microsoft
wasn't behind it. Granted the Amiga survived in its own niche, but I bet
that overall acceptance and user base would have been MUCH higher with
Microsoft support. 

  Ok, I'm rambling off on a tangent, and haven't even said Apple ][ yet
(there!)
 
  Yes, Rhapsody will probably slowly kill Apple if it doesn't have
support of AT LEAST Microsoft. Rhapsody better at least run old System 7
software. I love the idea of the new OS, but without Microsoft's
blessing, they're digging a grave.

-- 
Brian J. Bernstein
bernstbj@ix.netcom.com
http://www.netcom.com/~bernstbj/