madd@world.std.com (jim frost) (12/20/89)
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes: > Apple has a firm committment to PROFIT, and makes IBM look positively >benevolent by comparison. Only if you look at IBM's small change, which is its PC market. IBM deliberately slowed the AT because a fast AT might have chopped into System/36 sales, which at the time was among IBM's most profitable areas. They took a beating in the PC market for it, but hell they sold /36's for a couple of years longer than they might have. If you look around now you see IBM shifting away from the standard PC viewpoint right back to what they did in the past -- fairly smart terminals which do much of the processing locally to unload large centralized processors. IBM wants PC's to be the next 3270. Apple, big and arrogant as it is, doesn't even compare. BTW, I was of the opinion that the Microsoft/Apple lawsuit was supposed to slow down Microsoft. Looked pretty hard to win but every day that Microsoft spends dealing with Apple and not selling Windows is another bunch of Apples out the door. And if they did win, so much the better. Pretty shrewd business work even if it is pretty nasty. I consider the Xerox suit to be similar -- Xerox looks to be saying "yo, all these suits are ridiculous". $150 million is to get the attention of the common man -- it's certainly only a hand slap considering the profitability of the Mac. And if it shows people that Xerox can be inventive, so much the better. Neither lawsuit seems to be particularly bent towards the necessity of winning, but more of an overall strategy or publicity statement. Big picture, people. Always look for the big picture. jim frost madd@std.com
rob@prism.TMC.COM (12/21/89)
>IBM deliberately slowed the AT because a fast AT might have chopped into >System/36 sales, which at the time was among IBM's most profitable areas. >Apple, big and arrogant as it is, doesn't even compare. I have no love for IBM's product-line protectionism (the AT was the best known example, but there are numerous others), but Apple has engaged in this, too. The early Macs were crippled in various ways to prevent them from competing with the Lisa. Sadly, most companies do this at times. Fortunately for users, this policy is self-defeating. It almost killed the Macintosh. IBM's refusal to upgrade the AT was the beginning of its long market share slide in the PC world (the early PS/2's, all of which were deliberately limited in one way or another, hastened this decline). And the trail is littered with the bones of minicomputer makers who, to protect existing product lines, refused to introduce desktop machines. >BTW, I was of the opinion that the Microsoft/Apple lawsuit was >supposed to slow down Microsoft. Looked pretty hard to win but every >day that Microsoft spends dealing with Apple and not selling Windows >is another bunch of Apples out the door. And if they did win, so much >the better. Pretty shrewd business work even if it is pretty nasty. >Neither lawsuit seems to be particularly bent towards the necessity of >winning, but more of an overall strategy or publicity statement. Probably true. Lots of the lawsuits filed these days are Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt lawsuits. (Some others, as Ashton-Tate has freely admitted, are meant to bankrupt small competitors with legal fees). The success of the Apple suit against Microsoft is questionable, though. Apple is given such a small chance of winning (most of the case has already been thrown out) that few people take it into account when making purchases. Windows is selling like crazy, and is gaining momentum every day (to the point, ironically, that IBM and Microsoft are worried about its effect on yet another product that has been crippled in the name of product-line protectionism, OS/2).