heberlei@iris.ucdavis.edu (Todd) (06/09/89)
I have seen people in net-land mentioning the broken Apple code; now Associated Press has picked up the story. I too would like to see a cheaper Macintosh, but... Whoever did this really PISSES ME OFF!! I think an organization should benefit from their own R&D. I fear if after a company puts many man hours and lots of money into an R&D effort only to have other companies copy it, fewer and fewer companies will invest into new research. ======== a little personal history =========== A couple of years ago, in an AI class, I started a long assignment the day it was started, worked many many hours, and actually finished it three days in advanced. Someone I new was having trouble with a function call, so I told him to look into my account (it was the last assignment, so I didn't care about the account) to see how I had done it; the function was only a few Lisp lines. After the assignments were turned in, I had a chance to look at them; it seemed nearly all the programs that worked (it was a tough assignment) consisted largly of my code-several didn't even bother to change the comments! I didn't care about the grade, but people taking advantage of my hard work, without asking or saying thanks, really made me mad! IF PEOPLE WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MAC'S POPULARITY (Don't forget that Apple spent a lot of time and money making the Mac popular), LET THEM WRITE THE CODE THEMSELVES!!! Sorry, just had to vent some anger -Todd
mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (06/11/89)
>I have seen people in net-land mentioning the broken Apple code; now >Associated Press has picked up the story. I too would like to see a >cheaper Macintosh, but... >Whoever did this really PISSES ME OFF!! I think an organization >should benefit from their own R&D. I fear if after a company puts >many man hours and lots of money into an R&D effort only to have other >companies copy it, fewer and fewer companies will invest into new >research. Actually this is probably wrong. If someone comes up with a new product, and make a success of it, they will make money. They have the benefit of having it first, having all the know-how to make it better because of the head start, etc. All other things being equal, cloners will make a poorer product, and the original will get all the sales. But seldom are all other things equal. Sometimes the original is a small company, and a larger company will make something similar and fight it out in the courts for years, or just buy up th esmall company. IF it weren't for antitrust law, IBM would have bought up Apple long ago. Sometimes the original is a big company, or soon gets that way (examples: Apple, Xerox). They then have a monopoly. There IS no direct competition. They make the worst product they can possibly sell for the highest possible price. Xerox did this, Apple still does, Polaroid tries. While IBM lets cloners make far better boxes then they do, and the users win. Eventually the patents run out, the ROMs are cloned (legally), the people get mad at "look and feel" lawsuits and boycott the perpretators (or make such suits illegal), and someone else , usually Japanese, takes over. The best way, for everyone except a very few very rich people, is to simply allow clones for a reasonable royalty, and have cooperation. This is the Japanese way, and it works very well indeed. By not allowing a whole industry to spring up around them, Apple is going to end up like Xerox and Polaroid: devoid of the lead in the fields they created. One no longer sees real Xerox copiers anymore. They lost the lead. One no longer sees Polaroid Instant Cameras - Who cares when there is a one hour developing place on every other corner, and the 35 mm auto-everything cameras are smaller and better? The best method of making money is to earn it by making the best product in a big market. Doug McDonald
mnkonar@manyjars.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Murat N. Konar) (06/12/89)
In article <46100309@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >Sometimes the original is a big company, or soon gets that way >(examples: Apple, Xerox). They then have a monopoly. There IS >no direct competition. They make the worst product they can possibly >sell for the highest possible price. Xerox did this, Apple still >does, Polaroid tries. While IBM lets cloners make far better Ha, ha, ha. If this were true, Apple would be making PC clones. At the highest possible price, too. But seriously, a counter-example: Xerox brought out the Star workstation. It was way ahead of its time and predates the Lisa by about a year or two. They were the leader in graphical interfaces. What killed them was not that they prevented others from cloning their technology, it was poor marketing. This has historically been Xerox's problem. The amount of technology developed but not exploited at Xerox boggles the mind. to wit: Laser writer technology, Ethernet, Postscript, Graphical User Interfaces (as we know them today) all had their genesis inside Xerox (well, maybe graph= ical UI's started elsewhere, but Xerox certainly developed it to a usable form). ____________________________________________________________________ Have a day. :^| Murat N. Konar Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN mnkonar@SRC.honeywell.com (internet) {umn-cs,ems,bthpyd}!srcsip!mnkonar(UUCP)
omullarn@oracle.oracle.com (Oliver Mullarney) (06/13/89)
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Actually, according to the book "FUMBLING THE FUTURE" GUI's as we know them
today owe a hell of a lot to the Alto (the Star's predecessor), the whole
anything you can do with a paper and ink metaphor came from PARC, as did the
modelessness (can that possibly be a word? <Grin>), Laser scanning and
printing, ethernet, and oodles of other goodies...in fact they really invented
DTP! Seems they had desktop based publishing software running on Alto systems
in beta test at an actual publisher back in the middle 70's!
UUCP: {amdahl!bungia, uunet!rosevax, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!dfitzwat
ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!dfitzwat@nosc.mil
INET: dfitzwat@pnet51.cts.comgillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (06/15/89)
/* Written 11:26 am Jun 12, 1989 by mnkonar@manyjars.SRC.Honeywell.COM in p.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac */ > Xerox brought out the Star workstation. It was way ahead of > its time and predates the Lisa by about a year or two. They > were the leader in graphical interfaces. What killed them was > not that they prevented others from cloning their technology, > it was poor marketing.... This is a distortion. Here are some reasons you are omitting: (1) Xerox wanted to sell its machine for $15-$20,000, Apple wanted to sell its for $10,000. This is outrageous for a machine whose biggest feature was fancy word processing, typically relegated to secretaries. Remember, the PC did not take off until visicalc/lotus appeared, appealing to (high-paid) mid-level managers. In both cases, the products were aimed at the wrong audience for the price. (1) Both these systems are completely closed architectures: no compilers for sale. The Xerox DLion was the same speed as a VAX 750, and included virtual memory. In 1981, $15,000 was an incredible buy! But you couldn't PROGRAM the d*mn thing! *so* the moral is: Companies that try to keep things proprietary forever eventually die horrible deaths. Apple probably has 5 years before someone has the guts to blow them away in court. After all, didn't fujitsu blow IBM away in court, over the sale of the IBM OS? Didn't IBM get creamed in the 1960's over their disk-drive interfaces? Apple, it's only a matter of time!
mnkonar@gorby.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Murat N. Konar) (06/20/89)
In article <126900028@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >/* Written 11:26 am Jun 12, 1989 by mnkonar@manyjars.SRC.Honeywell.COM in p.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac */ >> Xerox brought out the Star workstation. It was way ahead of >> its time and predates the Lisa by about a year or two. They >> were the leader in graphical interfaces. What killed them was >> not that they prevented others from cloning their technology, >> it was poor marketing.... > >This is a distortion. Here are some reasons you are omitting: > >(1) Xerox wanted to sell its machine for $15-$20,000, Apple wanted to >sell its for $10,000. This is outrageous for a machine whose biggest >feature was fancy word processing, typically relegated to secretaries. >Remember, the PC did not take off until visicalc/lotus appeared, >appealing to (high-paid) mid-level managers. In both cases, the >products were aimed at the wrong audience for the price. I suspect that you would have aimed these machines at programmers and other technical professionals? The key here is that the number of programmers << number of office users. What sells office users on systems is capability and usability. Both the Lisa and Star had great potential, but I'll agree that the Lisa was priced too high (probably the Star as well). But pricing does come under the domain of marketing. BTW, the Lisa came with (bundled) at 10K: LisaDraw (a drawing program) LisaWrite (word processing) LisaProject (project management) LisaCalc (SPREADSHEET for mid-level managers) LisaList (data base) LisaGraph (charting) So the Lisa DID have a spreadsheet BUNDLED! >(1) Both these systems are completely closed architectures: no The Lisa was not a closed system. It even had slots. It had compilers (remember the Lisa toolkit and Lisa Programmers Workshop?) All early Macintosh development had to be done on Lisas. ____________________________________________________________________ Have a day. :^| Murat N. Konar Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN mnkonar@SRC.honeywell.com (internet) {umn-cs,ems,bthpyd}!srcsip!mnkonar(UUCP)