To all,
I think Jobs has been doing a fine job leading apple thus far except for his decision on cloning. And, like many others, this decision worries me. Maybe taking out Power Computing was justified, but alienating Motorola, IBM, Tatung and others was a mistake. Apple needs strong partners. Given the contracting market share and the souring public sentiment, it was unwise to drive away strong partners. There have been conflicting accounts of the OS negotiations. It seems to me that some sort of workable compromise could have been reached. But now that's all moot.
Umax is still in the game. It worries me that Apple won't allow Umax to sell a clone based on the G3. Apple had to discontinue the 9600/350 because of a chip shortage. If they had allowed Umax to ship High end G3 clones, perhaps many of the customers who could not get 9600/350's could have bought high end clones from Umax. I fear that many customers are tired of being unable to get the latest fastest high end systems from Apple when they are introduced and are switching to Wintel because of this. It may well be a greedy and self-destructive move on Apple's part not to let cloners innovate at the high end. Surely increased licensing fees could have at least partially offset lost sales to cloners. I'm excited about the Gossamer machines, but will it be too little too late?
Does anyone know if Apple collects any royalties from firewire, which, I understand is their invention? It seems to be gaining broad acceptance as a new standard for wide bandwidth data transfers from DV camcorders and digital cameras.
AZ |
