[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Can Quix save Apple?



>>>>> "William" == WILLIAM J MILLER <wjm@wwa.com> writes:

    William> I believe that if Apple were to either put the OS on
    William> Intel hardware, or support ARDI with all the technical
    William> specs that they / you needed, they could become more
    William> profitable.  Where had Microsoft made the bulk of its
    William> money? They did it by licensing the OS.

I do not think that is true.  I think that helped them significantly
in the beginning, but I think their Apps (on both platforms) is where
the bulk of their income comes from.

    William> Apple really can't produce the volum,e of custom ASICs
    William> needed by clone manufacturers.  Thats why the deal with
    William> gateway fell through.  If they out the os on NON Apple
    William> hardware, they can work out licensing agreements, to
    William> distribute the OS.

That will change with PPCP, which will be shipping before we'd get
MacOS released for Intel boxes.

    William> You guys (speaking to ARDI) really ought to work with
    William> QUIX, using their technology to drop in system 7.5, and
    William> allow them to use your emulator.  Crate a mutual
    William> technology exchange.

I disagree.  What QUIX did wasn't very hard, nor was it a new concept.
Just like the people who have made Amigas run MacOS, they've taken the
ROMs and System file for a PPC based machine and added some glue so a
different PPC based machine can use them.  When we can afford to use
dirty engineers, I don't think we'll have much trouble duplicating
that type of work.  We already do much of the same stuff (and tons
more beyond it) already.

    William> Did anyone read in a recent MacWeek, about Apple wanting
    William> to put Windows or Windows 95 on the Mac.  They ran into
    William> some problems.  They lost there OEM licensing agreement
    William> with Microsoft, and in order to get a new one, they must
    William> swear that they will not sue MS for patent infringement.
    William> They then said, well why not put the non-upgrade version
    William> of WIndows95 on the Mac.  Problem, it comes on 1.7 (or
    William> so) meg floppies that the mac (Super) Drive can't read.
    William> The full product does not come on CD.

    William> Why does Apple want Windows on Apple hardware, but they
    William> don't want MacOS on Intel (or compatible (Cyrix, AMD,
    William> NexGen)) hardware?

We don't know that the report is correct, and it's not clear whether
the "new" Apple will or won't want MacOS on Intel.  One time in the
past, Apple evaluated the possibility of putting MacOS on Intel and
they came to the conclusion that 1) the only way it can be done
efficiently is to do it in a source compatible way, not a binary
compatible way and 2) the ISVs wouldn't do the ports.  It is much
easier to remember the result than the reason for the result, so many
people will think "tried that -- it didn't work" when they think about
MacOS on Intel.

    William> Bill Miller

--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com


References: