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Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew
From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew)
Newsgroups: alt.flame,comp.sys.mac.misc,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: Mac clones (was Re: AT&T Claims patent on part of MIT's X11)
Message-ID: <VeDay5w163w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 4 Mar 91 13:16:54 GMT
References: <1991Feb24.073634.11556@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.misc,alt.religion.computers
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 46

xanthian@zorch.sf-bay.org (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> [AT&T legal slime is harassing X11 users over the patented "backing store"
>  method of saving obscured parts of overlapping windows, with an offer of
>  "licenses". Original legal letter is posted in gnu.g++.announce.]
> 
> Looks like AT&T has joined the lists of those who can't produce commercially
> competitive products, and so have decided to recover operating expenses by
> suing those who can but don't maintain big suites of lawyers.

On the subject of litigative corporations, I saw some interesting news last
week... Some company has successfully produced a clone of the Mac OS ROM,
using 'clean room' techniques. They are licensing their code to a number of
far East computer companies, and we can expect to see Mac clones in about a
year's time.

In order to avoid legal hassles, they've also been smart enough to change the
front-end look and feel; so although the clone runs Mac software, the windows
are SAA compliant. I saw some screenshots, and it looked quite effective.

Personally, I think this is great news. Apple stopped innovating and brought
in the lawyers; now they have one year in which to get their act together.
There are a number of things I think they should do in order to survive:

   1) Bring down prices. Especially in Europe, where prices are about 40%
      more than the (already inflated) US prices.

   2) License the ROMs out to third party hardware developers. Apple is going
      to lose its stranglehold on the Mac architecture anyway, so it might as
      well make a profit in doing so.

   3) Stop suing people over look and feel. If Apple doesn't stop doing this,
      the Mac look and feel will die. Can you think of any reason why a big
      corporate buyer would go for the Mac front-end, when he could go for
      one of the clones and have full Mac compatibility combined with the
      SAA standard front-end he has on all his other machines (Motif,
      Windows, Presentation Manager)?

Apple currently seems set on becoming the IBM of the 1990s. Maybe now it will
learn that bad guys don't win in the long term.

> Now if only shareware returned adequate living expenses.

Yes, it would be nice, wouldn't it?


mathew