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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sowbug who wrote (32778)	11/7/1999 9:08:00 PM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Sowbug: It is the internet mystique again. The browser is the key to the kingdom. They don't see it as an HTML interpreter and an adjunct utility to the OS, controlling the I/O from the web but as a sacred and mysterious object. It really is no more or less important than a modem driver or a controller that connects the keyboard ,printer,video disk drive and other peripherals to the cpu. JFD

To: Sowbug who wrote (32778)	11/7/1999 10:41:00 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 74651

Not being a programmer, I can't give you a detailed response. However, it appears that sofware developers who want to develop applications for the Mac OS can buy a developer's kit, which shows them how to use the Mac features to make their software applications work smoothly with the system. If MSFT provides the same accommodation for applications developers for Windows, that's all that is necessary. However, if its own browser (to take the issue addressed by the court) effectively makes a competing browser work poorly when both are installed, then there has to be a way to allow the competing product to work without interference. Otherwise nobody would want the competing browser. I've used both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer versions in their Mac versions. I prefer certain Netscape features to the Explorer, and prefer other Explorer features to Netscape. Neither are entirely satisfactory, though I may not be using their latest versions. Because I do a lot of research online, I want something that works fast, and I don't care too much whether it displays beautifully on the screen or not. I also resent having to upgrade memory to accommodate later software versions that require more and more memory. So if I have to accommodate two browsers instead of one, that is one more inconvenience, and possibly another way to degrade overall performance of a system short of memory. Those are my preferences. They are also among the issues brought out by the court to explain why the bundling of the Internet Explorer into the system could be construed to effectively eliminate demand for Navigator. Whether the judge's conclusions are warranted is a reasonable subject for debate, but from the legal standpoint, there they are!