Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!isi.edu!venera.isi.edu!jas From: jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Apple Computer wins ruling against 'Windows' Message-ID: <17219@venera.isi.edu> Date: 19 Mar 91 19:29:19 GMT References: <4325@gmdzi.gmd.de> Sender: news@isi.edu Organization: USC-ISI Lines: 42 In-reply-to: kiran@copper.ucs.indiana.edu's message of 18 Mar 91 01:52:25 GMT In article kiran@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle) writes: >Wolfgang Strobl writes: >"partially because Apple invests more into what they call >"Human Interface Design" and nothing into support for cheap hardware >from various sources." > >Sounds like a good trare-off to me. Why should Apple waste its money >supporting people who are too cheap to pay for quality and instead buy >inferior products? As you might guess, I think Apple is right in not >making its technology as freely available as IBM has made its tech. It >seems that _anyone_ can make an ibm-"compatible" machine... What does >this do to both quality control and the ability to make a change that >affects all the machines for the better (such as new system software :-)) > Come on... do you think IBM *willingly* gave up its architecture to the cloners? No way; it fought tooth and nail, but someone (Phoenix?) got a clean-room BIOS done, and that was that. IBM had no legal leg to stand upon. But they sure spread FUD about the clones for as long as they could. When IBM came out with their new MCA, they said the cloners were SOL, but the cloners stymied them by announcing that someone had come up with a functional equivalent of MCA, so IBM about-faced and announced it's intent to license MCA. No going concern will willingly give up areas where it can profit. These areas are lost by competition, and not all of it is fair. A lot of times the "competitors" have the advantage of not accruing any R&D costs, so they can undercut the originators. Apart from the lunatic fringe of GNU people who seem to think that people in the real world would get paid to produce good software and give it away, no one believes that a market without some protection for originators of new things (ideas, procedures, etc.) would work. It's a "Tragedy of the Commons" case, thinly veiled. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey A. Sullivan | Senior Systems Programmer jas@venera.isi.edu | Information Sciences Institute jas@isi.edu | University of Southern California