| [Rant] Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 16-Jul-2002 23:29 GMT by Paul Smith | 71 comments
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If a serious software publisher plans to leave a platform with a huge userbase (surely we're talking in the hundreds of thousands for MacOSX?), then what chance does OS4 have of making it with promotion figures of about 600? (for forum)
Link to OSNews.com article
If nothing else, this proves what what many have been saying for the past 12 months (and openly ridiculed for). The days of binding your software to custom hardware are over.
Surely it is time that the people in charge of AmigaOS acknowledged that the non-mainsteam hardware route was a mistake. I'd bet that a similar promotion scheme for a version of AmigaOS that ran on the majority of the world's computers would have brought a much larger, and possibly commercially viable userbase. I'd also wager that the numbers sold would have been so, that it would have brought more revenue than the current scheme of selling hardware with it.
This is not intended as flamebait. I hope to provoke a discussion on the future of AmigaOS, rather than a flame-fest.
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 1 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Mike Veroukis on 16-Jul-2002 21:46 GMT | Yes, this is bad news for Apple. But, it's not so much the size that matters but it's growth rate. If the Mac community is not growing then it might as well be shrinking. If Amiga can keep the OS4 community growing then that represents opportunity. Of course I'm not even remotely suggesting that Microsoft would consider developing for the Amiga, but if there is money to be made someone will take the risk. Hyperion obviously thinks so.
- Mike |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 2 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Darrin on 16-Jul-2002 21:55 GMT | I think Amiga Inc are quite aware of this market which is why the plan to introduce AmigaDE/AmigaAnywhere into OS5. Ideally, in a few years every software company will be writing their software once to run on AmigaDE and not have to worry about what hardware or OS a person plans to run it on.
Note, I said "ideally" and I'm polishing my rose-coloured glasses as I type ;) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 3 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 16-Jul-2002 22:12 GMT | I was wondering when this would happen, as it was a long time coming. Of course, this is MS, and they're using this as the Perfect Excuse- Apple intentionally(?) made X easy to 'pirate' from their free/nearly-free upgrade CDs, and one wonders how those installs are actually counted- do those store-giveaway CDs get counted as sales? MS propped up Apple during the antitrust phase, but now that it's nearly done with, they're either guaranteed a favorable decision through Federal bias alone, or they're screwed no matter what they do given the judge's demonstrated inability to put up with their perjury and deceit... as little can impact the outcome any longer, they're free to have a field-day in the interim.
Now, the question is- if they can their Mac products, where will the coders go? Despite The Reg's poking at missing localizations in Word, MS's Mac software has often been higher-quality than its Windows counterparts, and you can tell the Mac teams have taken some perverse pleasure in keeping their projects alive. If it all goes to pot overnight, will we see a new applications company founded in Redmond overnight? ...The split the DOJ once wanted, but for the wrong platform? :)
As to how this relates to Amiga... I doubt it does. If anything, our chance of seeing MS apps is skewed bizarrely upwards, given the connections people have... though I still doubt it will happen. The preorders are pretty dismal, but if you assume 25% of the market is willing to risk another BoXeR, 2,400 sales won't be too bad for the first release of a rather expensive niche machine that nobody else on the planet has heard of... and hey, isn't the drool-factor of seeing someone's A1000 what set off the A500 wave? [Now all we need is some drool-factor..] |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 4 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by gary_c on 16-Jul-2002 23:35 GMT | I agree that MS's threatening to kill Office/Mac doesn't have any implications for Amiga, really. There are other extenuating circumstances that make this a special case, as the other guys pointed out. Anyway, MS Office for MacOSX still sold something like 180,000 units IIRC, which may not be much for Microsoft, but is pretty solid for a $400 app, I'd guess. Amiga will be trying to attract much smaller developers with lower costs and fewer options, and obviously these outfits can manage with much smaller sales.
Still, the original question of how Amiga and Amiga developers can make it is a valid one, and ties in with Floyd's question of where's the drool factor. The early Amiga computers could come out on top in a specs/features one-on-one with other computers at the time. That ain't gonna happen this time, as far as I can tell. The BeBox, running BeOS, had clear advantages (at least momentarily and in some niches) over people's other options at the time, to give another example. You can make a case for buying, say, a Mac over a Windows box. But what exactly is the advantage that the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 has relative to people's other computing options? It's hard for me to see much of a rationale for the production of this thing other than to reward the patience of the old-time fans. Not to say that there *couldn't* be a reason for it, but I haven't seen one articulated, beyond the fluff pieces at amiga.com that have little basis in reality.
As for AmigaDE being the "killer app" for AmigaOS5 or whatever, I don't see that, really. Think about it. If having an application run on Windows is important, the developer can just write for the Windows platform. It doesn't make much sense to write to AmigaAnywhere and count on the VP thing to enable your app on Windows. It's better just to go directly there, since it already has 90% or whatever of all desktops. Unless AmigaAnywhere actually *comes with* new Windows installs, it's hard to see developers wanting to deal with the extra marketing obstacle of requiring users to buy and install AmigaAnywhere in order to run their app. Maybe if a developer has something really incredible he can bundle AmigaAnywhere with his app and ease the procedure for the buyer.
But anyway, this is all thinking about AmigaDE apps on Windows. How does AmigaOS benefit from AmigaDE? In my opinion, the more developers produce apps to run on AmigaDE rather than native on AmigaOS, the less incentive people have to buy into the Amiga platform. After all, the Amiga apps they want are already available on Windows, etc. via AmigaAnywhere. Amiga, Inc. is actually killing AmigaOS by pushing developers to produce for the multi-platform AmigaAnywhere instead.
-- gary_c |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 5 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by the man in the shadows on 17-Jul-2002 02:00 GMT | In reply to Comment 4 (gary_c):
> But anyway, this is all thinking about AmigaDE apps on Windows. How does AmigaOS
> benefit from AmigaDE? In my opinion, the more developers produce apps to run on
> AmigaDE rather than native on AmigaOS, the less incentive people have to buy into
> the Amiga platform. After all, the Amiga apps they want are already available on
> Windows, etc. via AmigaAnywhere. Amiga, Inc. is actually killing AmigaOS by pushing
> developers to produce for the multi-platform AmigaAnywhere instead.
Great point there gary_c, but you might have missed one thing... the sandbox. I'm a Java developer and one of my least favorite things about Java is having to use "java Foo.jar" all the time (kind of like "rx bar.rexx"). AmigaDE is very similar to Java but there is one thing AmigaOS will offer that the AmigaAnywhere can not... no sandbox. You won't have to worry about launching AmigaAnywhere just to launch a program written for the AmigaDE when you are using AmigaOS. This is why I think AmigaDE applications have a good chance to survive once a "native layer" AmigaOS hits the shelf (the often speculated AmigaOS5). |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 6 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Frans on 17-Jul-2002 06:01 GMT | In reply to Comment 2 (Darrin):
How can you polish your glasses AND type at the same time, are you cheating and involving your feet somehow? ;-) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 7 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by koan on 17-Jul-2002 06:15 GMT | I think that the article again goes back to the
"can Amiga take on Microsoft/Apple/etc and win" question
which is surely not the point.
Amiga have to take on the 100,000 or so Amiga users worldwide
and make a suitable profit, that's all.
They don't have to "beat" MS or make fancier hardware than Apple.
If they come up with AmigaDE and it works well then they have a good
chance of succeeding where Java has failed (how many years on and still no
"killer" Java apps ?) Then again Java is to all intents (pun intended)
free. Free vs pay, which one will win ? I digress.
I'm sure Amiga Inc has done their maths and worked out whether they believe
they will still have jobs in 3 years time. Until then, OS4 is safely in the hands of Hyperion so unless they are also a bunch of deluded fools then we have nothing to worry about in the short term. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 8 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Mika Hanhijärvi on 17-Jul-2002 06:43 GMT | | There is no point talking about this again and again and again. AmigaOS 4 will run on PPC platforma and thats it. It has been said milions of times that if AmigaOS 4 would run only on PC hardware there would be no new commercial software because noone would buy AmigaOS version when Windows version is also available. I don't understand why people keep harping on this issue. If you want AmigaOS on x86 then use UAE or Amithlon or wait OS5. I'm sure rest of us will be wery happy with PPC. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 9 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Mika Hanhijärvi on 17-Jul-2002 06:51 GMT | | This is really boring, this issye has been talked so many times that atleast I'll skip rest of the possible 100+ message thread because I'm sure noone can say anything what we haven't heard million times before :P |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 10 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Iggy Drougge on 17-Jul-2002 07:06 GMT | This is not a serious software publisher we're talking about - It's Microsoft. They have entirely different agendas than most. OTOH, they could set a dangerous trend, though I doubt it. I also doubt that M$ will be able to exit the Mac market. They need the alibi it provides.
Still, was Microsoft Office ever considered by anyone to be ported to Amiga? No, nope, nein, non, niet, nej. Running M$ software is hardly the intention of the average Amiga buyer. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 11 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by José on 17-Jul-2002 07:08 GMT | In reply to Comment 2 (Darrin):
Sorry, buy I think marketwise the only good thing for DE is PDA's and cellphones. In the desktop the only thing it'd make would be shrink the ppc Amiga user base even more (well it's raising now, I think, give it time dammit:)...). Many wouldn't buy it. It's exclusives that sell consoles remember????
Just MHO.
Cheers |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 12 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Lando / Trinity on 17-Jul-2002 07:31 GMT | In reply to Comment 3 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
> 2,400 sales won't be too bad for the first release of a rather expensive
>niche machine that nobody else on the planet has heard of...
I'm sorry to say this, but it is bad. Really, utterly dismal. You have to remember, the 580 pre-orders doesnt even count the number of AmigaOne sales - many people (maybe even the majority) will be using the coupon solely for OS4, and won't even be buying an A1G3-SE.
>and hey, isn't the drool-factor of seeing someone's A1000 what set off the
>A500 wave?
Yes, but the A1000 was revolutionary. At the time the A1000 appeared, people were using Apple IIe's, C64's, Sinclair Spectrum's, IBM PC's and so on. The A1000 was literally hundreds of times better than what they had sitting on their desk. It was a real dream machine. The A1G3-SE is somewhat slower and less powerful than what most people are now using, and not-at-all revolutionary. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 13 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by kjetil on 17-Jul-2002 07:54 GMT | As long as it is not so expensive as the Mac, and offer an better operating system, as long as Amiga can be more stable then MacOSX or Windows, or any otter operating system,
Linux is quite unstable when it comes to the new kernels 2.4.X and 2.5.X, if Amiga comes with working stable and fast computer for home entertainment and geek users. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 14 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 08:00 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (kjetil):
AmigaOS 4 has a snowballs chance in hell with regards to stability when compared to MacOS X. Simple fact. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 15 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by reflect on 17-Jul-2002 08:05 GMT | You also have to remember that AmigaOS is appealing both to the novice user because it's fairly simplistic, and to the power-user.
You have control with AmigaOS, something I feel is lacking in windows.
Linux/unix has lots of control, yet they lack the gui. Only Mac OS X has a consistent gui for the unix world.
So hopefully, people will see this machine and perhaps like what they see.
And as for the numbers, there were some 300 memberships before they announced that it was for either os4, os4+motherboard or os+A1.
There are a number of people that wants to see it in action first, then go out and buy it. There was a guess earlier that 25% preordered. I think this is too low. Ofcourse, this depends on how long time you count in.. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 16 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by John Chandler on 17-Jul-2002 09:16 GMT | In reply to Comment 8 (Mika Hanhijärvi):
Or lend support to AROS which implements a pretty damn fine open source clone on x86.
John |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 17 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by redrumloa on 17-Jul-2002 09:16 GMT | In reply to Comment 14 (Anonymous):
>AmigaOS 4 has a snowballs chance in hell with regards to stability when
>compared to MacOS X. Simple fact.
pfffffffffffft!! Funny that I hear from Mac users that OSX has stability issues. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 18 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 09:22 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (kjetil):
> as long as Amiga can be more stable then MacOSX or Windows, or
> any otter operating system, Linux is quite unstable when it comes
> to the new kernels 2.4.X and 2.5.X
Make Amiga more stable than BSD Unix? How? BSD isn't exactly crash prone.
As for 2.4.x Linux, I've been using it on two different machines since
early March of this year. It hasn't crashed, not even once. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 19 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Sam Dunham on 17-Jul-2002 09:45 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (kjetil):
Linux 2.4 unstable?!?!? I've got a Mandrake 8.2 box sitting right here. I have a client with a Mandrake 8.2 box and a client with a RedHat 7.3 box and I've never had to reboot any of the machines except because of power failure. The only time I've HAD to even restart any services on mine is when my ISP decided to change the DNS servers. Linux is a lot of things (bloated, comlpex, etc...) but it is NOT unstable. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 20 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Hammer on 17-Jul-2002 09:48 GMT | In reply to Comment 8 (Mika Hanhijärvi):
> There is no point talking about this again and again and again. AmigaOS 4
> will run on PPC platforma and thats it. It has been said milions of times
> that if AmigaOS 4 would run only on PC hardware there would be no new
> commercial software because noone would buy AmigaOS version when Windows
> version is also available. I don't understand why people keep harping on
> this issue. If you want AmigaOS on x86 then use UAE or Amithlon or wait OS5. > I'm sure rest of us will be wery happy with PPC.
AmigaOS was use be the birthplace of original software.... |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 21 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 09:58 GMT | In reply to Comment 15 (reflect):
Forget it, they don't know what market evaluation is:) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 22 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Jack Perry on 17-Jul-2002 09:58 GMT | In reply to Comment 18 (Anonymous):
I've been using Linux (various upgrades from Red Hat) for over a year now, and it's crashed several times.
Of course all the Linux people who were talking about how important uniformity was in the office so we could help each other -- disappeared when this happened. :-) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 23 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by reflect on 17-Jul-2002 10:38 GMT | In reply to Comment 22 (Jack Perry):
Let's say I've been using bsd for years, and the only stability issues I've seen are from people that doesn't know what they are doing.
Anyone can make a rock solid Solaris installation to be shaky, it all comes down to incompetence. There's a big difference in 'my desktop crashed' and 'the server crashed'.
I've seen uptime that goes over 1000 days. But hey, if you want to stay on the bleeding edge, you get immature drivers. Again, if you know what you are doing, and you want a rock solid server, there are definately ways to do it.
wbr
Andreas Loong |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 24 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 11:12 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (kjetil):
laptop:~> uname -sr && uptime
Linux 2.4.17
16:08:15 up 140 days, 7:41, 16 users, load average: 1.00, 1.06, 1.02 |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 25 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by reflect on 17-Jul-2002 11:19 GMT | $ uname -s && uptime && psrinfo -v
SunOS 5.7
3:14pm up 500 day(s), 13:54, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.03, 0.03
Status of processor 1 as of: 07/17/02 15:14:44
Processor has been on-line since 03/04/01 00:20:53.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 480 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 3 as of: 07/17/02 15:14:44
Processor has been on-line since 03/04/01 00:20:55.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 480 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Ok, this is solaris, and it's not a very high uptime for solaris.
Point beeing, I don't think a newly ported OS will be as stable as one of the contenders to the Throne of Stability.
(has quite a bit to do with hardware, granted.) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 26 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by sutro on 17-Jul-2002 11:42 GMT | In reply to Comment 5 (the man in the shadows):
>>>Comment 5 of 24
> I'm a Java developer and one of my least favorite things about Java is having to use "java Foo.jar" all the time (kind of like "rx bar.rexx").
I don't see your point.
>>>Comment 7 of 24
>If they come up with AmigaDE and it works well then they have a good
chance of succeeding where Java has failed (how many years on and still no
"killer" Java apps ?)
Java has failed ? Now, that's news to me....
Don't make me laugh.
As for Office develpment on MacOS, I haven't heard anything but the story makes sense. M$ is a rival to Apple and Apple lately has gone offensive trying to lure customers from M$. I don't see Apple loosing much in the long term though. If you count users who need a Word Processor in their computer you will be suprised to find out that the number has declined over the years so much that it is no longer the first option. Try Internet, mp3 and Games instead.
If I were Beeell Gate$ I would worry about up-and-coming OpenOffice/StarOffice. They are going to loose greatly in many markets such as Education.
Speaking for myself, as a multi-platform user I am happy I don't have to use M$ Office. Once OpenOffice runs smoothly on my Mac it's game over for Office. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 27 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Roj on 17-Jul-2002 11:47 GMT | I can't help but wonder if this isn't Microsoft's answer to the
pot-shot type ads Apple has been airing lately.
http://www.apple.com/switch/ads |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 28 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Fabian Jimenez on 17-Jul-2002 11:47 GMT | Lets just say that Microsoft is using this as an excuse to leave the Mac market. Microsoft doesn't want to support anything they can firmly control, in this case the Church of Jobs. I don't think it is a terrible loss so long as Claris/Apple Works and others read in Word and Excel documents.
As for what this means to Amiga, not much IMHO. The Amiga One wont attract developers the size of Microsoft (allbeit M$ seems interested in Amiga DE). What the Amiga One needs to do is draw back the "bedroom programmer" as well as some of the smaller companies the Amiga used to have. Sadly this potential split between AOS 4 and MOS will mean that neither will sell more than 2000 units at the most, which is pathetic (who is right or wrong doesn't concern me at this point). |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 29 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Don Cox on 17-Jul-2002 12:08 GMT | In reply to Comment 28 (Fabian Jimenez):
"As for what this means to Amiga, not much IMHO. The Amiga One wont attract developers the size of
Microsoft (allbeit M$ seems interested in Amiga DE). What the Amiga One needs to do is draw back the
"bedroom programmer" as well as some of the smaller companies the Amiga used to have. Sadly this
potential split between AOS 4 and MOS will mean that neither will sell more than 2000 units at the most,
which is pathetic (who is right or wrong doesn't concern me at this
point)."
However, that split shouldn't concern the application programmer too
much. For instance, if you use MUI and compile for 68k and PPC, the
program should run on all the machines your customers are using. The
PPC version could be skipped if the program doesn't need the ultimate
in speed.
It's still less trouble than checking that a program works on every
possible version of Windows or every Linux setup. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 30 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 12:34 GMT | In reply to Comment 28 (Fabian Jimenez):
Microsoft aren't interested in AmigaDE. They are interested in flooding the PDA market with WinCE stuff, quantity is more important than quality. Same reason Sony allowed all those 2nd rate PS1 games to ship. With no better guide offered to them, consumers will assume that a large number of titlesmore choice = better platform.
The AmigaDE product for PocketPC (with 67 titles available already, so Amiga Inc says) announced triumphantly in March has still yet to appear. Instead only the expensive and rather limited "Entertainment Pack" was released. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 31 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Lee O'Malley on 17-Jul-2002 13:21 GMT | The hole in your theory is that MS Office is really not needed anymore to provide the apps to sustain a new OS. Sun has put an end to the M$ dominance in office suites, even on the Amiga. I think someone, even now, is working on a port of the open source OpenOffice suite to the new AmigaOS, so stong office suite offering problem solved. This is the same for Mac OSX and even windows. With StarOffice 6.0 and Open Office available, Microsoft is the big loser here.
The other thing is Amiga hardware. Amiga needs it's own hardware. I think few realize that the Amiga has always been a combination of software & hardware, not just an OS. While BeOS had it's own hardware, it was gaining ground, but as soon as it dropped that and went x86 totally, it failed. The same thing would happen to the Amiga. Right now it is only a niche market, but if it again mangages to get out a new OS with specific hardware, it will gain supporters & users. We need the hardware too and actually better than we will get, but that is another discussion. ;o)
Lee |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 32 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Darrin on 17-Jul-2002 13:27 GMT | In reply to Comment 6 (Frans):
>>How can you polish your glasses AND type at the same time, are you cheating and involving your feet somehow? ;-)
Would you believe that I'm really Zaphod Beeblebrox? I always knew this extra arm would come in handy ;) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 33 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Darrin on 17-Jul-2002 13:34 GMT | In reply to Comment 27 (Roj):
>>I can't help but wonder if this isn't Microsoft's answer to the
pot-shot type ads Apple has been airing lately.
I was thinking the same thing myself. All those Apple ads where those people claim "There's nothing I can do on my PC that I can't do on my Mac". Well, pretty soon they'll have to admit that they won't be able to use the latest version of the most popular office suite.
It's going to be a blow to the Mac market, but I'm sure Bill Gates has been grinding his teeth every time one of those ads has aired. Don't blame the dog for biting you when you've just walked up to it and kicked it in the nuts. :) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 34 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by dammy on 17-Jul-2002 13:51 GMT | In reply to Comment 33 (Darrin):
Actually, it may be a good thing <tm> if M$ does pull out of Mac version of M$ Office. This may force Jobs to blow some cash on OpenOffice developement. Which is always a good thing when Commercial boys support the OSS coders.
Dammy |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 35 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by TimeWillTell on 17-Jul-2002 14:17 GMT | Hello
As far as what M$ is doing, there never is any question about it. They are
going to use what ever means that are available to them to crush
competition..... With the fed's blind eye focused on them, anything goes.
As far as Amiga's future is concerned, Dave Haynie made an interesting
commenton another thread on ANN.
It was his last paragraph in the post below. I find this rather compelling
considering that MR. Haynie has been involved in as much Amiga history as
any member of the Amiga community dating back to very early times.
http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?show=1026197588&category=unmoderated&number=30 |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 36 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Don Cox on 17-Jul-2002 14:20 GMT | In reply to Comment 31 (Lee O'Malley):
"The hole in your theory is that MS Office is really not needed anymore to provide the apps to sustain a new
OS. Sun has put an end to the M$ dominance in office suites, even on the Amiga. I think someone, even
now, is working on a port of the open source OpenOffice suite to the new AmigaOS, so stong office suite
offering problem solved. "
I think he's still trying to get a team together.
IMO this would help the Amiga much more than porting BeOS (for
instance). Contact office@vgrabbe.de |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 37 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 14:27 GMT | In reply to Comment 25 (reflect):
Well if we are boasting (bearing in mind we only switched this beast over to user-use after configuration 64 days ago)...
SunOS
5:20pm up 64 days, 10:59, 93 users, load average: 5.42, 5.40, 5.11
Status of processor 8 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:14.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 9 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 10 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 11 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 16 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 17 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 18 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 19 as of: 07/17/02 17:20:13
Processor has been on-line since 05/14/02 06:20:25.
The sparcv9 processor operates at 900 MHz,
and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
However, I completely agree with you re stability of Solaris et al compared with AOS - AOS has a long way to go (even AOS4 will have a huge challenge) to be anywhere NEAR as stable (I too have seen uptimes of well over 1,000 days on some heavily used Solaris servers here.) |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 38 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Amigasteve on 17-Jul-2002 14:46 GMT | In reply to Comment 31 (Lee O'Malley):
Coincidentally I recently purchased an iBook (the company would not replace the winblows laptop that was stolen on a business trip), on which I hope to run Amiga OS5 some day. <g> My experience with Appleworks so far is that it does a fair job of import / export of Word, Excel etc that there is no reason to pay the cash for Office. I feel no compunction to install it anyway. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 39 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by acg on 17-Jul-2002 15:00 GMT | I am not sure 600 pre-orders can give a good indication of what
amount of units will sell. After all, it represents about $30,000
US for a promise that the products will come out. So far, I haven't
come across an AmigaONE running OS4, or have heard of how
OS4 runs a specific app...so 600 preorders is not toooo bad, and
I think it shows how Amiga fans (-atics?) are very leery about
different promises, no matter who makes them. I mean, how many
disappointments can we take from Commodore, Alex Amor, Mr Pleasance,
Escom, Viscorp, Gateway, etc....BUT, it is a tough business, so
we're still hanging in there...But what are the options?
Slavery to MS, Apple Inc. high prices, and nice software, the Linux
jungle, BeOS conceptual beauty, MorphOS, SGI,...come to mind....
Personally I think a high end machine that has a killer app, that
sells to niche markets should be the first strike, then the mundane
stuff like word processors, etc will follow. How about the Amiga
OS running a 60 small screen video security system on the Perhelia
graphic chip? If you could get security system companies to install
those, do you think the people who use those might want to use
other software set-up for that system?
OK, I've said enough....I just keep hoping someone can get it right. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 40 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Kelly Samel on 17-Jul-2002 15:39 GMT | Microsoft is not a serious software developer. They are
only interested in pushing their software through Windows,
they have made many poor quality versions of their software
for Mac in the past which dis-credits their competition.
You really can't expect a direct competitor to support
any other OS or hardware than the one's they sell. This
does not mean anything to Mac, Amiga or any other system.
It simply means that Microsoft wants more money and less
competition so they will become more proprietory if this
achieves that result. Meanwhile if you look at a market
that has competition like "Game consoles" xbox is
underselling the old PS1 in Japan and Gamecube and PS2
are destroying their sales... This is why they will drop
Mac or any other competitive system in a market where
they have dominion they can set the rules. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 41 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by strobe on 17-Jul-2002 15:47 GMT | On stability...
Mac OS X is far more stable than Linux/PPC. The only stability issue I've had with OS X since DP4 has been when a process has gone haywire and it appears that the display server locks up. That isn't technically a crash since the OS is still running (I can login remotely and fix it), and I haven't had that problem in over a year IIRC.
I don't have high hopes that AOS4 or MOS will be as stable. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 42 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 16:25 GMT | In reply to Comment 35 (TimeWillTell):
"It was his last paragraph in the post below. I find this rather compelling
considering that MR. Haynie has been involved in as much Amiga history as
any member of the Amiga community dating back to very early times.
http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?show=1026197588&category=unmoderated&number=30"
Interesting and encouraging. This begs the question: why hasn't Dave Haynie been retained to work in some capacity?
And why hasn't some enterprising Amiga marketing pogue thought of using Dave for a promotion? The guy is highly regarded in the industry and he bleeds red and white. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 43 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Coolio on 17-Jul-2002 16:56 GMT | Where do you people get your statistics of "hundred thousand OS X" users.
Go read this:
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/02/07/17/1452239.shtml?tid=107
Use your web browsers search feature and look for "million"
The paragraph to note is,
"Jobs also noted that there are 2.5 million Mac OS X users, that 77 percent of owners of new Macs keep OS X as the primary OS, and that they extimate there will be 5 million Mac OS X users by the end of the year, representing 20% of all Mac users using the new OS in the first 24 months." |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 44 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Coolio on 17-Jul-2002 17:05 GMT | In reply to Comment 19 (Sam Dunham):
>Linux 2.4 unstable?!?!? I've got a Mandrake 8.2 box sitting right here. I have
>a client with a Mandrake 8.2 box and a client with a RedHat 7.3 box and I've
>never had to reboot any of the machines except because of power failure. The
>only time I've HAD to even restart any services on mine is when my ISP decided
Leaving a *nix box running as a server is hardly a good example of stability. I could run an MS-DOS version of BIND in a MS-DOS and it would run forever. Why not put your Linux distro to the test... Fire up XWindows and Konquerer, or Mozilla, or whatever half assed web browser you use, and do some serious browsing on script heavy webpages. Oh, do listen to some streaming media while you're at it. What's this? You had to reboot? Golly gee willickers! But, I thought it was stable! |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 45 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Rafo on 17-Jul-2002 17:59 GMT | | I think they'd better exit from the games console market first. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 46 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 17-Jul-2002 18:06 GMT | In reply to Comment 44 (Coolio):
This is my primary movie-watching / web surfing / game playing Linux box. It was rebooted in June for a new Matrox card, and twice before that in, uh, April I think when I tried a cheap nVidia card (awful video quality, swapped it back)
I can't say I'm going to specifically "try" your test because it sounds much like my usual "leisure" activity pattern. I don't remember ever having to reboot while doing something so simple and routine, and I do routinely listen to the radio over the Internet while playing Flash games in Mozilla. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 47 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Jaybee on 17-Jul-2002 19:41 GMT | In reply to Comment 44 (Coolio):
You just described exactly what I was doing. And no, it hasn't crashed yet. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 48 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by smithy on 17-Jul-2002 19:59 GMT | In reply to Comment 31 (Lee O'Malley):
>While BeOS had it's own hardware, it was gaining ground, but as soon as it
>dropped that and went x86 totally
Sorry, but the reverse is true. It gained enormous ground AFTER it went x86.
>it failed. The same thing would happen to the Amiga.
Again, it is the reverse that is true. Unless you think there a userbase of 600 can decrease by very much. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 49 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Ruben Monteiro on 17-Jul-2002 21:38 GMT | In reply to Comment 4 (gary_c):
AmigaDE is not meant to "kill" AmigaOS or anything. I don't think we can expect to see much serious software beeing written exclusively to the AmigaOS. The only way to get developers writing into the Amiga platform is via AmigaDE, because this allows them to also target Windows and therefore make enough money to survive.
Have no illusions about this: the only way to get developers back into Amiga is to have a solid AmigaDE, running everywhere, with a good set of APIs. This is what Amiga Inc is doing and it makes perfect sense. |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 50 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by gary_c on 17-Jul-2002 23:09 GMT | In reply to Comment 49 (Ruben Monteiro):
No, I didn't mean to say that AmigaDE was "meant" to kill AmigaOS. It's just that the end result will be a much weaker AmigaOS the more AmigaDE is promoted. There will be much less reason for a user to buy into the Amiga hardware/OS platform if the same apps are available via AmigaDE on Windows or Linux or other platforms. Yes, it'll be good for developers if they can code for AmigaDE and gain access to the Windows market, but this is something different. What Amiga, Inc. is doing in this case is providing a exit route for Amiga developers to the Windows market. The positives that AmigaDE provides for the proprietary Amiga platform are far outweighed by the negatives, IMHO. Maybe there's something brewing for AmigaOS5 and beyond that?will tip this balance back toward the positive, but I'm not aware of anything like that.
-- gary_c |
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