The Holmes Page: The Soap Box 1997/04/09

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THE SOAP BOX 1997/04/09

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1997/04/09: The Apple Falls Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison recently talked about buying Apple. There is speculation that Ellison wants to sell Apple's hardware business to one of the Macintosh clone makers, leaving Apple as a software-only company.
Software? Apple's strength is hardware, not software.
The Macintosh was always controlled by one company -- that was the "magic" of the Mac. If Apple stops making computers, they will lose the symbiosis of the hardware and software that were designed together, to run together.
Perhaps Ellison wants to change Apple into Microsoft, where a software company can dictate the kind of hardware required to run their operating system, without having to actually build it.
Years ago, Apple could have licensed the hardware manufacturing to other companies, but retained control of the design of new systems and software. Now it's too late.
Apple's software is behind the times. Only now, with the addition of the NeXT software, is Apple starting to deal with multitasking, multiprocessing, and protected memory which the PC world has had since Windows NT arrived.
Ellison shouldn't buy Apple, he should buy Xerox. That's where all the cool ideas came from: the mouse, the GUI, ethernet. The list goes on.
Of course, I always wanted a Mac. Who didn't? It was a neat little machine. But instead, I used an old PC with a Hercules monochrome graphics card which had better resolution, more software available, and cost half the price. I used it to create attractive newsletters and presentations in the '80s. Ironically, many people thought that I used a Mac!

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