I have been reading messages for a while and I thought I would give my thoughts.
I have been around graphic arts for quite a while. My business (publishing) is msft based but when I talk to printers and graphic arts places they do make some good points for Apple. Here are some:
Investment - Walk around a reasonable graphic arts business and start crunching numbers. You will see why they will never leave apple. The investment in hardware, software and training is overwhelming. If you even go into your average copy shop you will find they have not changed much since they started having computers - almost all Macs.
Postscript - A lot of this goes back to the beginning when Adobe invented postscript. Postscript allows type and graphics to be scaled without distortion. Apple adopted postscript as their method of output. Almost everyone else in graphic arts did too. Msft did not. Postscript was a enemy because msft would have to pay Adobe royalties (and raise the price of their product). So msft created postscript clones - true type for type fonts and "windows metafiles" for graphics. Big failure. Nobody likes it (the rips choke because of the default number of points created by metafiles,.etc..). Here is a typical result of this mess: If you are on a msft machine and you want to install a true type font you go to the system type installer. If the font happens to be a postscript font you can not install it and there is no message to tell you why. You have to somehow know that the only way to install your font is to get a copy of Adobe's ATM, install it, and use it to install postscript fonts. Msft even has a check box in their type installer that will suppress all postscript fonts on the system (even if they are installed with ATM).
Steve Jobs - Nobody is perfect. Bad Jobs: He has a bad personality and makes bad business decisions. Good Jobs: He is a dreamer/idealist and has enough money to manufacture his visions.
Jobs (Bad Business): He decided at Next that if you make a better mousetrap everybody will come regardless of price. So he made the best mousetrap possible. He was wrong. The cheapest Next system was around $12,000 (I and many of my friends wanted to buy and develop on Next systems but they were just too expensive - you gotta be in the $1500 - $2500 range or your product is dead). Apple's Lisa had the same problem. Let's hope two bonks on the head are enough for Apple.
Jobs (Good Business): Next is widely regarded as the best UNIX interface available. There are a lot of flavors of UNIX but it is fundamentally the most well understood and researched OS ever made. Zillons of dollars have been spent by countries and universities all over the world perfecting this system. Tapping into it instead of creating a "revolutionary new" OS is the smartest thing Jobs has ever done. Businesses want stability and dependability based on years of research, not wild new research projects. The primary reason businesses did not buy Next was that Jobs could not establish a customer base and prove he would be in business tomorrow.
Summary:
I think that the OS that is closest to UNIX and has the best GUI will win in the long run.
Recommendations:
Apple has a real opportunity here. Keep Jobs in the position of evangelist /idea man (not project supervisor). Tell the Mac faithful that we are moving to a UNIX platform because it will offer us the strength, stability and open future we have long sought. Emphasize that what Apple has created is coming with us plus we will gain more. Enumerate and emphasize the gains: display postscript, built in dictionary, UNIX based web server, etc. etc. Set a time table for OS delivery and stick to it. This will at least freeze people like me who intend to buy a server in the near future. Also, customers need something in the near future (a year is eternity in this game). Why not at least let us buy a Next OS for intel platform now with a promise that it will be compatible with the "Next-Apple" later this year? We can use it as a web server. And please, please, please sell your OS the way msft does. Right now I can go into any software store, buy windows95 (fairly cheap) and install it on my average box. I gotta be able to do the same with Next-Apple.
MSFT weakness:
MSFT has its problems. NT was written from the ground up and designed with "UNIX like" features but had to be backwardly compatible with all the old Microsoft code. It does not do cross platform support very well. Example: msft advertises that NT server allows you connectivity with MAC platform. Wrong. All you are allowed to do is make a directory on NT server and wait for someone from a MAC platform to stick a file in it. Only then it can read it. Msft problems with type management are legendary. This highlights msft's other problem. In its long battle to belittle Apple and postscript, msft has created its own problems. Msft does not have a postscript alternative and they will not likely have anything in the near future. Jobs' favorite quip that Microsoft has no elegance or creativity has some truth. The average person knows this. The ad department should hammer that one to death.
All things (dollars and hardware) being equal, people will buy the best quality product.
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