Perspective: What if? An alternative history of tech

Just before we were about to enter high school, my brother and I told one of my father's friends about our plans to join the wrestling team.

"Golf or ski instead," he recommended. "You'll do those things the rest of your life."

We took the advice. But recently, I wondered: What if wrestling's place in the world were different?

Consider business conferences, for one. You'd see people walking around fancy hotels in protective headgear and Spandex overalls. "The agenda has now been changed. The Bantamweight Scramble will now be in the colonnade room," a voice over the PA system would inform conventioneers. Steve Ballmer or Linus Torvalds--who wouldn't want to see them settle it the old fashioned way?

The entire history of the tech industry, in fact, could have been vastly altered if the outcome of certain events or trends had changed. Below are a few examples of what might have been, had things been different. It's not exhaustive, and not definitive, so please send your own scenarios and criticisms for a follow-up.

What if Moore's Law had ended as expected?
Although Moore's Law, which states that chipmakers can double the number of transistors on a given chip every two years, is now predicted to peter out around 2021, many had thought it would end earlier because of limitations in lithography. Gordon Moore himself once believed that it could end with 1-micron chips (which arrived in 1991) and later said the finish would come with 250-nanometer manufacturing (which appeared in 1997).

In a lot of ways, the history of the tech industry is the story of people who didn't like their job.

If he'd been right, the progress that consumers expect from tech products--more performance, more capabilities, lower costs--would have slowed to a crawl. Cell phones would be the size of bricks and not contain cameras, while PC makers would be trying to craft the sub-$2,000 notebook. Google and Yahoo? They'd be Department of Defense projects.

Worse, most of us in the tech industry would be probably working somewhere else because the replacement cycle, which fuels revenue and funds jobs, would be much longer. People don't buy new PCs because the old ones wear out, but because the new stuff is faster.

"Silicon lasts too long. Everybody throws away perfectly good pieces of electronics gear to buy a newer version," wrote Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research in a recent edition of his newsletter The Chip Insider.

Hopefully, the anticipated replacements for silicon will arrive in time to keep the momentum going.

What if Apple Computer had licensed the Mac OS?
If Apple had given PC makers the right to bundle the Mac operating system into computers, the theory goes, competition would have come to the OS market. Microsoft would not have ever wielded monopoly power, and security would have never been a problem.

Unfortunately, that's probably not how the script would have turned out. Apple had a wealth of competitive weapons, but it often lacked organization and vision. (Athens faced the same problem in the Peloponnesian War.) The Mac maker passed on America Online, but later developed its eWorld online service, after all. And some Apple alumni went on to Live Picture, Be and Cidco--not really an honor roll of corporate acumen.

Diplomacy has not always been a strong suit at Apple either. Computer dealers and software developers may not always love Microsoft, but many of them were put through pretty hard times by Apple (especially those dealers whom Apple eliminated from its education program).

Licensing its operating system would have given Apple a moderate revenue cushion. This might have forestalled the crisis at the company in the mid-1990s, prevented the marriage of convenience with Next, the return of Steve Jobs, the first iMac and then the iPod. The powerful sense among Apple fans that the company had been cheated of its destiny would have attenuated.

What if IBM had not allowed Microsoft to license?
Big Blue lost control of the PC world when it let Microsoft sell operating systems to third parties. The contract nuance led to the creation of Compaq and Packard Bell.

More importantly, it led to the arrival of Asian contract manufacturers like Acer, which in turn led to the growth of the tech industry on the continent outside of Japan. That in turn contributed to the rise of companies in China and India, which in turn is leading toward borderless economics.

In addition, if IBM hadn't acted, there would have been a lack of standardization in PCs that could have led to the arrival of a plethora of incompatible consumer and corporate computing devices.

So had IBM gone the other way, outsourcing wouldn't threaten your job as much as it does. But you'd also be reading this on a French Minitel.

What if Larry Ellison drove an RV?
Yachtsman, Japanese art aficionado, occasional lawsuit defendant---somehow, Oracle founder Larry Ellison doesn't strike many as a regular guy. Seemingly, the same personal ambition in its employees has fueled the progress of the software maker.

Google and Yahoo? They'd be Department of Defense projects.

This has made Oracle a success, but paradoxically, has led to intense competition from companies--Salesforce.com, Siebel Systems and, formerly, PeopleSoft--run by disgruntled ex-employees. A little more "Kumbaya" to keep colleagues happy and Ellison might have been able to achieve his lifelong dream of being the richest man in the world.

In a lot of ways, the history of the tech industry is the story of people who didn't like their job. Transistor pioneer William Shockley's somewhat abrasive manner is said to have driven the "Traitorous Eight" from Shockley Semiconductor to Fairchild Semiconductor. Management changes and not enough stock options then drove Fairchild employees to found National Semiconductor, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and the venture firm now named Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Similarly, Richard Stallman left a promising career at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to finish the GNU project. Without it, the legal framework for Linux--along with the (sometimes strident) push for changes to intellectual property laws--might never have existed.

What if Digital had succeeded?
Digital Equipment is the lost tribe of technology. It came up with the AltaVista search engine, the Alpha and StrongARM processors, and the PC lines Venturis and Celebris--easily two of the best space-age gladiator brand names ever. Its heritage can be seen in AMD's Athlon chip and the PlayStation 2, and its efforts helped paved the way for Microsoft to sell server software.

What if the mouse had not been invented?
The mouse, created by Doug Engelbart, is an interesting invention because it wasn't inevitable. Would its absence now make a huge difference? Initially I thought so, but someone in the office informed me that joysticks had already been launched when the mouse was introduced. And with joysticks, all that wrestling practice would have made it an easy adjustment.

Biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time share resort, among other occupations.

More Perspectives

What if? Who is fringing todays on historys technology!

10,000,000 Silicon Bounty<br />I know the industries are.<br /><br />US'120 Patent Description and Terms<br /><br />Dear, Sir/Madam:<br /><br />I have spent years in college as a Graduate, and a student colleague of a pronoun known Scientist and dear personal friend. Dr. Rastko C. Maglic is the father creator of the Operational Amplifier. Dr. Maglic classified and peered JR as a higher intellect and being a Scientist in his own rights. JR is the inventor of Selective Negation June 22, 1988. The inventor's technology existed and was tested beyond 64 bit Technology over twelve years ago, and honored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It describes a novel binary adder that is faster than conventional adders. This included advantages over competing products or processes on the market or in development.<br /><br />TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION<br /><br />The present invention relates generally to digital electronic circuits, such as those used in general purpose computers and microprocessors and in special purpose machines. More specifically, the present invention relates to electronic circuits which are used in performing arithmetic operations on two's complement binary numbers.<br /><br />BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION<br /><br />Conventional binary arithmetic circuits perform arithmetic operations, particularly subtraction and negation, in an indirect and inefficient manner. Subtraction has been performed by inverting a subtrahend number to form a one's complement of the subtrahend, adding the inverted subtrahend to a minuend number, and then incrementing the addition result. The incrementing of the addition result is typically accomplished by supplying a carry pulse to an adder when a subtraction is performed. A simple negation has been treated as a special subtraction problem with the minuend forced to equal zero. Thus, the same indirect steps are involved in obtaining a two's complement negation of an incoming number. Often, additional enabling combinatorial logic is required to selectively invert the subtrahend and to selectively apply the carry pulse when a subtraction or negation operation is required and to prevent inversion of the subtrahend and addition of a carry pulse when addition and other arithmetic operations are required.<br /><br />In many situations, the indirect techniques for performing subtraction and negation operations are undesirable. These indirect techniques often require an undesirably large amount of circuit area or number of components for their implementation. Moreover, these indirect techniques often cause the propagation delay between the time when an incoming number is valid and the time when the subtraction or negation operation results are valid to be undesirably long.<br /><br />SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION<br /><br />Accordingly, it is an advantage of the present invention that an improved arithmetic circuit is provided.<br /><br />Another advantage of the present invention is that an arithmetic circuit is provided which may be incorporated in a wide variety of applications, including arithmetic logic units (ALUs) for microprocessors or other computing circuits, add/subtract circuits, subtraction circuits, and negation circuits.<br /><br />Another advantage of the present invention is that an arithmetic circuit is provided which generates a two's complement negation of an incoming number in a small amount of space and with a small amount of propagation delay.<br /><br />Another advantage of the present invention is that an arithmetic circuit is provided which selectively generates a negation of an incoming number.<br /><br />Another advantage of the present invention is that an arithmetic circuit is provided which selectively performs addition or subtraction operations, wherein the subtraction operations are performed in a direct manner which does not require the generation of a carry input pulse.<br /><br />Another advantage of the present invention is that an arithmetic circuit is provided which may be adapted to efficiently generate negations for incoming numbers having any number of bits.<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.uspatent120.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.uspatent120.com</a>

[RetiredMidn]

What if Digital *had* succeeded?

By Wikipedia's accounting, DEC was founded in 1957 and peaked <br />in the late 80's (roughly 30 years later), before selling out at age <br />41 to Compaq. If you're going to call that a failure, then it's too <br />soon to call Dell a success.

[Andrew J Glina]

ARM

Digital didn't design StrongARM anyway. ARM did. Digital was used for it's foundries, just like Transmeta use TSMC, Fujitsu and (I think) TI to make theirs. I do believe that Digtal made some changes and when they were bought out those rights (somehow) transfered. I should look into this.... (If anyone knows more/better please post!)

[michael kanellos]

Digital

Thanks for the comments on Digital. Yes, they definitely succeeded in the 60s and 70s. I guess its' more a question of what if it didn't fall apart. <br /><br />also, StrongArm derives from an architectual license from arm. It gave Digital (and now Intel) to substantially change the overall design. only intel and moto have this, so you can definitely credit digital for work here.

[jbelkin]

Apple is Here Today Because NO LICENSING

Apple is Here Today Because of Its Market Share and is MS the new America Industry GM - The Slow Downward?<br /><br />As the MS music store launches, people love to drag out the MS versus Apple fight of yore and even cite the Netscape-Internet Explorer scenario as evidence that Apple is doomed.<br /><br />But this is why when you are in court, you have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth because while some of the clichés are partially true, the whole truth is much more complex.<br /><br />And like the forensics rage these days, we should realize the truth is not always so obvious.<br /><br />APPLE SHOULD HAVE LICENSED THEIR OS<br /><br />On the surface, the scenario seems to play out simply enough ? Apple?s OS would have the market share that MS currently enjoys today. Is the world really that simple?<br /><br />For those not around that time ? early/mid 1980?s, technology and especially anything involving computers seemed otherworldly. 99% of people in the US never saw a computer other than on TV, the movies or a photograph. They were always huge mainframes with spinning tapes drives ? seemed ominous, scary and otherworldly. Think HAL from 2001 or WARGAMES. And IBM was seen as this giant-brained company who controlled a secret world of knowledge, data and information. If IBM and its employees were not thought of as gods, they were at least archbishops and high priests of some secret order much, much smarter than you &#38; I.<br /><br />So even if you worked for a competitor like Digital, HP or NEC ? even if you knew your colleagues at IBM were flesh &#38; blood, you still respected the marketing &#38; perceived eminence of the name IBM.<br /><br />So, if IBM suddenly started selling a thing called PERSONAL COMPUTERS, who were you to argue with their choice of OS?&#8232;&#8232;So, even if Apple had decided to license, what?s your first choice? The IBM choice or a choice from a company started by two scruffy guys named after a fruit?&#8232;<br />If you?re HP, NEC, Toshiba, NCR (AT&#38;T), Digital, and others in the first wave ? Aren?t you going to choose what IBM chooses? If nothing else, to say ? we?re selling you an IBM endorsed OS!<br /><br />And of course, in a slight oversight, IBM did not get an exclusive license to sell DOS ? aka: MS DOS, aka: Seattle Computer Products DOS. I?m sure there?s a fun account of how IBM arrived at that decision but I think mostly, they were arrogant ? they just presumed if you?re going to buy a flavor of DOS, only an idiot would choose an non IBM DOS.<br /><br />Of course, Steve Job &#38; Wozniak were not that anxious to really ?sell out? anyway but even if they were talked into licensing then ? Bill Gates (just as scruffy looking) could simply point out at business pitches, ?IBM choose us? (ignoring the factor MS DOS was really a modified Seattle Computer Products DOS).<br /><br />Also keep in mind, MS was not competing against the hardware manufacturers ? all they were doing was acting as a supplier ? a key component but still just a supplier. Apple was not going to stop manufacturing hardware so even if Apple decided it was worth it (margin-wise/business decision-wise) to license, other PC hardware manufacturers would still have to compete against Apple itself. Would Apple have decided to give up part of the entire process just to license the OS?<br /><br />That that in itself is risky? Most manufacturers would?ve tried to play both hands ? some PC hardware manufacturers surely would?ve picked to sell Mac OS but exclusively? Highly unlikely. So, what?s Apple?s guarantee that if they gave up manufacturing machines and only sold OSes that next month, Tandy wouldn?t have stopped selling Mac OS and would go strictly with MS DOS? And I don?t think it takes a stretch of the imagination to see a scenario where Bill Gates &#38; MS would suddenly drastically undercut Mac OS prices ? after all, MS had virtually no infrastructure then ? just programmers unlike Apple which had a manufacturing plants to pay for.<br /><br />So while people are quick to mock Apple for losing market share, how many other companies have faced competitors like IBM, HP, NEC, Toshiba, NCR (AT&#38;T), Digital, Microsoft, Intel, the 2nd wave of PC sellers like Zenith &#38; Compaq and all the non corporate PC makers like Packard Bell, gateway &#38; emachines ? and still survived?<br /><br />In fact, every PC maker that was once #1 in PC sales has either pulled drastically out of the market (IBM only sells to corporate customers essentially), gone (Packard Bell), or sold (too many to list). There is only three still standing. Apple. Dell &#38; HP. HP obviously has dozens of revenue lines including the printer &#38; server business to fall back on. Dell is #1 now but just like I?m sure people thought Tandy &#38; Compaq would be around forever, it?s still too early to tell as they?ll be like Packard Bell ? when your business model relies on being the cheapest assembler of PC components, when they lose that, that house of cards falls quickly.<br /><br />THE LICENSING SCENARIO #1<br /><br />But let?s say that Apple went all out ? and they hired a ?grown up? to go out and pitch Mac OS as a choice and many companies offered a choice and things went reasonably well ? let?s say Mac OS had 35% market share ? a good business and we?ll ignore the revenue that Apple probably would have to give up as manufacturer also because it?s hard to say if companies would?ve been willing to license Mac OS if Apple was still selling hardware.<br /><br />Who here thinks that Apple would NOT have been bought up?<br /><br />Other than IBM who dismissed Mac OS as too GUI ? there were about 10-20 multi billion dollar data processing/technology companies that could?ve swallowed Apple in 10 minutes. But like all scenarios you envision for some past, you have to detail speculation some more since the two Steve?s held most of the shares at one point but if Steve Jobs still leaves Apple in this new scenario and if someone like HP (who they tried to sell the original Apple idea to) came to them ? who knows, right? Who wouldn?t want to own 35% of the personal computer OS market? As Monty Burns might say, ?Ripe for the plucking!?<br /><br />THE LICENSING SCENARIO #2<br /><br />Or things don?t go that well. Remember, GUI was dismissed until Windows 95 came out so the Apple scenario of the early/mid 1990?s just gets pushed ahead by a few years. A few small clone makers jump onboard, eat all the low hanging &#38; the best high hanging fruit while Apple still has to spend money on R&#38;D and manufacturing and only getting the middle of the marketplace. (Like the scenario of the 1990?s ? it?s pretty easy to guess that some people will undercut Apple while others will only buy the fastest chip and go for the highest end) ? what does that leave Apple? So, while Apple might have a few more market share points ? they have nothing to fall back upon revenue wise.<br /><br />Again, someone probably would?ve stepped in and purchased Apple ? maybe even Steve Jobs at Next with Canon/EDS backing.<br /><br />THE LICENSING SCENARIO #3<br /><br />Also keep in mind that IT departments were clamoring for standards at this point so regardless ? maybe history does repeat itself. What?s IT going to choose? DOS or Mac OS in 1988? Even if the Mac OS had 35% of the market share? Part of MS? victory at IT was it was willing to give IT what they wanted in admin tools ? Apple did not ? if the two Steve?s were still in charge, I can?t see that scenario changing. IT again chooses DOS. Or the worse scenario ? Mac OS becomes more like DOS.<br /><br />THE LICENSING SCENARIO #4<br /><br />Or a combination of it but as the multi conglomerates get larger, instead of a relatively unified PC world choosing a standard MS DOS/Windows, wouldn?t the likely scenario have been that we would?ve had some weird hybrid of let?s license Mac OS &#38; DOS, cram them together and call it HP World OS? And Toshiba would do the same and call it Toshiba Harmony OS? (At this point, Rob Glaser would?ve sat bolt upright in his Spiderman PJ?s and felt like his world changed but he?s not sure how and then drift back to sleep dreaming of a world of barb wire and donuts but I digress).<br /><br />So, we?d end up with a lotto-like number of different versions of Mac &#38; DOS OSes?<br /><br />Then everybody would have to start buying each other out to get standardized? So we either end up exactly where we are now or instead of PC Magazine, we?d be reading ?CanonTandy MacDOS magazine??<br /><br />Unlike some other people who are so sure the past will repeat itself or whose minds are so simplistic and believes that every action will cause the same reaction forever and ever ? Personally, I have no idea what would?ve come true because each change in the past would?ve lead to a new branch of the timeline as you can see from some of these possibilities. None are so far fetched they could not have come true but the startling fact is that ?<br /><br />APPLE IS HERE BECAUSE IT?S MARKET SHARE WAS SO LOW<br /><br />That?s right.<br /><br />It is only because Apple was so far under the radar that no one absorbed it ? and we even have proof when Sun tried to buy Apple in the early 1990?s. They were not even willing to pay the actual MARKET PRICE. They wanted a discount on the price it was trading at and when no one was really willing to tender at a price BELOW what it was trading at on NASDAQ, Sun gave up.<br /><br />It is only because no one wanted a manufacturing arm of a PC company AND they figured it was a futile battle with MS because they saw the only battle as of market share in the PC marketplace. Just one quick stat ? while MS has 20 times the market share of Mac in PC Oses, MS does not have 20 times the revenue of Apple ? more like 5 times the revenue.<br /><br />PART I<br /><br />This is of course, not a complete day-by-day market share fight between Mac OS &#38; DOS/Windows (there are many other factors such as if Motorola had been more competitive with its chip speed after 1986, some things would?ve been different) but as you can see, it?s more complex than envisioned and even if you turn the scenario inside out, that does not mean we would?ve have ended up right were we are now or living in an entirely different world but I can tell you that just swapping Mac &#38; DOS market shares would?ve been a lot more complex that some simpletons envision.<br /><br />But it is safe to say because Apple?s market share was perceived to be so low and ?not worth the troble? that it survived to fight the fairer fight in the age of the internet ?<br /><br />THE NETSCAPE SCENARIO<br /><br />Again, the simple diagram is to follow the market share trajectory of Netscape versus IE but once again, it?s much complex.<br /><br />The background is that MS controlled the desktop LITERALLY and figuratively. Once they saw the internet thing taking off, they took over ? where Netscape was once bundled with some machines ? it was no longer being bundled. At that point in the internet &#38; the PC business, if you controlled distribution, you controlled the ballgame. MS used ever legal and some illegal means (as the courts have decided) in ?bundling? ? in some cases going as far as having to bundle IE or that vendor couldn?t sell Windows.<br /><br />So, they had the computer manufacturers locked up ? whether or not they wanted to bundle IE on the desktop ? they had to ? as long as they still wanted to sell Windows.<br /><br />MS obviously has a lot of pull in the corporate marketplace ? some were easy to convince such as partners of MS ? others might?ve needed some financial incentive such as discounting upgrade contracts et al. Netscape could not offer you a discount on selling you server software or trading marketing dollars for switching the corporation entirely to Explorer. It was essentially free so what difference did it really make ? it could save them a few bucks and it might make things cozy with MS.<br /><br />And in the era of dialup &#38; AOL ? what % of people could really download another browser? Most people didn?t even know how to download jpg's they could see on web pages ? let alone navigate to Netscape, download another browser and load it. On the Mac side, sure ? and advanced users knew how but even today, people do not know how to switch their browser startup page, you think they?d switch browsers?<br /><br />And of course, if you own the OS, it?s easy to make sure your software loads and runs faster ? in fact for a while there, you could not even access MS? sites without IE and in many cases, you still cannot venture deep in MS? sites without running IE. And certainly, Netscape had some speed problems that couldn?t be overcome in the era of dialup ? you combine all those factors and that?s why Netscape loses.<br /><br />SO, HOW ARE THINGS DIFFERENT NOW?<br /><br />Many things:<br /><br />1) MS has about 20 governments, and a couple thousand government agencies, states and counties ready to sue them at any maneuver that is even slightly egregious, illegal or unethical. MS cannot afford to antagonize anyone anymore. Governments and corporations will switch to Linux or Open Source if they can.<br /><br />2) While corporations still need MS, the desktop technology is pretty normalized. Unlike the leaps from DOS to Window 3.1 to Windows 95 ? There are plenty of companies and users who are fine running Win98 or 2000 ? you might be missing some interconnectivity and some other behind-the-scenes things, is the cost of upheaval &#38; the cost worth switching to XP ? for many corporations, the answer is no ? at least on a company-wide scale. They are not at the mercy of MS.<br /><br />3) For consumers, the top uses are: internet, email, photos, IM, music, and maybe viewing some video ? it?s all the same whether you use a Mac or any PC from 1998. Unlike the first few years of the PC revolution, if you need to do work at home, companies will give you a laptop so you are pretty free to buy any computer to use at home.<br /><br />4) The internet is a great equalizer. You can buy an url on the desktop or even buy a bookmark when the consumer launches IE for the first time but unlike a real brick and mortar store, going to Walmart.com is just as easy as going to Joes-by-the-creek.com. If anything, jazzing up your front page with video and flash is much more annoying and more likely to drive people away than if you just have a clean page that says WELCOME TO JOE?S BY THE CREEK.com ? unlike the real world where you can buy up Main Street, under price the Main Street mom &#38; pop store or have a much bigger selection ? on the internet, that doesn?t matter. I don?t have to drive anywhere and it doesn?t cost me any extra in gas whether I look at 5 websites or 200.<br /><br />WHAT?S WRONG WITH MS MUSIC?<br /><br />First, I?m sure they?ll do some business. Even Sony can sell 100,000 tracks a week with their crapfest of a music store and atrocious format and while they?re quick to tout 350 million users of Windows, to use get full use out of the MS Music store, you need to be running 2000 or XP, you need one of the 70 approved portable music player and be able &#38; willing to download MS Media Player 10.<br /><br />Let?s examine that 350 million users number. That is of course, worldwide so we can eliminate all the international users. We can also eliminate all the users using any versions older than 4 years old. We can also eliminate any non-small business users who are NOT allowed to randomly install software, cannot plug in external devices or purchase music tracks at work. We can also eliminate the huge % of Windows that are just terminals/servers (servers, cash registers, info kiosks, wedding registries, etc ?). How many does that really leave us?<br /><br />Journalists should be investigating when MS drops the number 350 million - where does that number come from? And what about the machines that don?t count?<br /><br />The key is also you need to own one of the 70 approved portable players. If Apple holds about a 60% market share and sells about 3 million units a year ? what?s left? 2 million non-ipods sold a year?<br /><br />I?m not exactly sure if any of those machines have even been released yet so presuming sales of 2 million a year and with 3 months left in the year ? albeit the holiday selling season ? so at the end of this year, MS? potential customer number is maybe 500,000 and of course, everyone is running 2000, XP and has downloaded Media Player 10?<br /><br />We also have to keep in mind that many of these are flash players that hold 12-36 songs ? how many songs will these people really be buying?<br /><br />And while I have no hard numbers, I have to ask ? if the bulk of PC buyers are looking for the cheapest machine ($499 to $999), are they really that eager to buy a portable music player AND buy tracks for $.99? Or the other end, the high-end gamers ? will they fall in line to buy DRM tracks of music or are they the heaviest users of illegal p2p software?<br /><br />Isn?t that why Windows users have always had portable players AND plenty of stores to buy from ? have not really done so? Of course, it didn?t really help that YOU the consumer had to keep track of what tracks you could burn and what you couldn?t? Versus the simplicity of the ipod &#38; the itunes music store?<br /><br />THE ALLEDGED HOLY GRAIL OF DIGITAL: THE BEATLES<br /><br />While I personally think the Beatles are great, too many baby boomer journalists are personalizing this.<br /><br />How many true Beatle fans do not have the CD?s already (we?re discounting vinyl holders as not part of the potential audience for digital downloads) and why wouldn?t you just convert your CD?s yourself to no-DRM Mp3?s? How many of these journalists will be buying their Beatle tracks online only? How many older baby boomers have refused to buy tracks at a store because no Beatle tracks are available so far?<br /><br />How many Beatle tracks will Nelly, Avril &#38; Ashlee Simpson fans wanting to buy at $.99? You honestly think having Beatle tracks online will sway them to one store? I?m not saying they?re not going to buy a track here or there but overall, it?s not going to make or break anything ? and if anything, the longer they wait ? the more people will be filled up the ?free &#38; illegal? tracks already.<br /><br />Again, I?m not knocking the Beatles ? I just don?t think they will move the needle substantially unless you come up with rare tracks available only online ? that might move some to come online but at great numbers? Who but the hardest hardcore baby boomer would buy a demo of LOVE ME DO?<br /><br />STREAMING RADIO<br /><br />First, itunes offers you a couple dozens ?internet radio? stations right there on the front. To create your own FM, you need to pay $10 bucks a month and plug in your player (presumably overnight) ? while that?s nice ? again, limited audience. Satellite radio offers you something available no place else ? either commercial free, programming unavailable elsewhere or where you normally cannot get reception. Because you are ?trapped? in your car, it replaces what?s available now.<br /><br />If you are smart enough to sign up for MS music internet radio, buy a portable player and be able to set it up for internet radio, why not just play one of thousands of stations online for free, record the stream, convert it to mp3 and load it onto your ipod or portable player?<br /><br />And again, it comes back to most of non-ipod sales being flash players, who?s going to go to all that trouble to download an hour of music for $10 a MONTH?<br /><br />WHAT IS WRONG WITH MS?<br /><br />In a nutshell, MS looks at their business with the greatest margins ? MS Office, Windows &#38; Server Division and is trying to replicate that model across everything else.<br /><br />By selling upgrade contracts, they even out their revenue ? if you look closely, their margins are close to 80%. That means for every dollar of revenue, they get to keep $.80! That?s almost unheard of. In fact, I?ll bet the U.S. Mint can?t make that printing money! So, how do they replace and extend that out?<br /><br />They try to figure out every business out there that can give them a monthly return. That?s why they bought into the cable business. That?s why they?re working on a cell phone OS and why they started Xbox.<br /><br />That?s why they went to so much effort to build that MS Watch OS. Because they saw that they could charge consumers $5 a month to get weather, sports and news. Never mind that no one asked for it or that the watch looks like something Kellogg?s rejected as too cheap to put in their cereal boxes ? MS just Power Pointed out that $5. It?s not much but if they can get 50 million Americans to buy into it ?<br /><br />That?s why they?re wiling to spend $2 billion dollars so far on Xbox. Because every cartridge you buy earns them revenue and if you?re online, you have to pay them every month.<br /><br />That?s why they?re desperately trying to build a cell phone OS business ? so they can make something with every cell phone sold (600 million in cell phone sales) and on every download, upload through MSN IM.<br /><br />Or a MS auto OS. Or why Bill Gates built that house with all the plasmas (when plasmas cost serious money) ? so he could show off that you could change art &#38; photos all the time ? oh yea, and he buys a stock photo house, Corbis so he can keep charging for the same photo over &#38; over again.<br /><br />Or digital media DRM ? they could care less about the actual reason or software but if they can make a couple quarters on every DVD-HD sold or a couple dimes on every CD sold or a couple pennies on every movie we download ? that?s what they want.<br /><br />They don?t want to sell us anything once ? they want to put you down as payee EVERY MONTH ? the ultimate health club you can never quit.<br /><br />And the problem is that MS could care less about what we really want ? the problem is they start with just trying to figure out how to nickel and dime us literally several times a day every day until we die. And the problems are products like a MS OS watch.<br /><br />THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES<br /><br />First, I don?t hate Bill Gates. While they did bend some rules and even break a couple, he delivered what people wanted then but now ? MS &#38; Bill Gates have seriously lost their way.<br /><br />He delivered a BASIC when people needed one. While he did not invent the spreadsheet or the word processor, WORD &#38; EXCEL were quantum leaps and what people wanted. He bought DOS to IBM because they needed a quick &#38; dirty OS. He gave IT Admins what they wanted. And he is another in the line to show people that almost anything is possible. That you can build a $60 billion business from not much ? while he was not exactly poor, his first business plans were from scratch.<br /><br />What has MS done lately? Never mind the spy ware-virus ridden Explorer and OS ? it?s going to take them another 2 years to come up with an OS ? an OS stripped of everything new so it?s essentially an XP upgrade? What else are they working on?<br /><br />And as for their marketing prowess? Now that they cannot lock out everybody else illegally? When consumers are actually free to choose ? besides Windows, what do people choose freely from MS?&#8232;&#8232;MSN could not dent AOL ? even though MS has thrown $2 billion at MSN ? not only could they not even buy customers with a $400 rebate, they missed the boat entirely on Google.<br /><br />Expedia? Sold. MSN Auctions? There?s a raging success. Xbox ? another $2 billion for about 15% worldwide market share. They ?won? the handheld OS business as it?s falling fast. They?re still losing in IM to AIM. Home Networking hardware division ? folded after a year ? some marketing prowess, huh? Xbox sports games? Same ? folded after a year of trying to compete with EA. WebTV? The Bob Windows OS?<br /><br />A similar fate awaits MS Music? The question is why? I mean, we know they can?t resist the lure of being the patent holders on future DRM for all entertainment but honestly, why? Because it?s digital ? they have to get involved? Consumers have decided Mp3?s are the digital format of choice for audio. For convenience, some of us are wiling to buy a DRM format (that we can easily burn to CD) but we don?t have to drive anywhere or buy an entire CD to get one song ? for that, we have AAC M4p. We also have open M4p, ogg, flac, shn, ape, not to mention CD audio ? so honestly, do we really need a 10th choice in music?<br /><br />MS has also been plugging away on phone OS, and auto Oses, cable box OSes for 5-6 years with miniscule market share. Some of it is because no one wants to work with them fearing their viral claws but then the bigger question is ? is MS done?<br /><br />Sure, they have $60 billion in cash and they?re going to generate $6 billion in cash flow this year but were the 1990?s to MS what the 1950?s were to GM? In the 1950?s GM was the AMERICA company that represented all that was powerful &#38; mighty about America ? does that seem vaguely familiar about MS in the 1990?s?<br /><br />GM has gone from over 50% market share in the auto business to 25% and dropping a bit every year ? and propped by revenue and profits from GMAC, the financing arm ? is that MS? Sure, they have a constant flow of revenue every year from Office, windows and servers but will they continue to waste and fritter away billions on projects that CONSUMERS don?t want? Is MSN the Vega? Is Xbox the Cimarron? We know WindowsBOB is the Pontiac Aztek. Sometimes we?re too quick to ask ? what have you done for us lately ? but honestly, after Windows 95, what have you done for us lately that?s actually innovative and that consumers actually want? And even though GM is losing market share overall, they have at least delivered dozens of cool cars in the last 50 years ? but MS, a watch OS, really? ***?

[Andrew J Glina]

Wow

That is the longest post I have ever seen. I hope that wasn't a cut and paste job.

[kakman1]

Cut him a check

Mr Belkin should get Mr Cannelos's paycheck. I suspect the comments by Mr Belkin were already written well ahead of time, before Mr Cannelos wrote his article, almost serendipitous, hmmm? Is Mr B. writing a book or magazine article?

[Llib Setag]

Bravo Mr. Belkin

Why are YOU not working for CNET?<br />I think they could use somebody of your caliber.<br /><br />Bravo!<br />-eyes wide open in Seattle-<br />Unix/Win/Mac user

[John Sawyer]

Not licensing Mac OS turned out OK, I suppose

Licensing or no licensing, look at it this way: you can still buy a Mac, running the Mac OS. Not licensing it didn't put Apple out of business, even though, for a while, it looked like it might. One of the main reasons the Mac OS doesn't have a bigger market share, is that Apple has never been good at marketing the Mac OS--they spent too much time assuming it would be more popular. When the result of that arrogance was a small market share, Jobs pronounced that this is what he PREFERRED. Sure.

[agreenawalt]

Apple wasn't a bad enough product to gain a footing

The whole argument about Apples lack of success being tied to licensing has never appealed to me.<br /><br />The reason for Apples lack of success was it's failure to penetrate the corporate market. If we can remember back to mid to late eighties, you will remember a world of stupidity. A world where corporations would pay all the money IBM could charge the for wonderful MCA PS/2s, and then load them with $1500 IRMA cards just to emulate a terminal. This was a world of Token Ring and all manner of historical relic. <br /><br />Given the nature of this environment, I don't find it a satisfying argument that Apple lost because they didn't license to the off-shore crowd. Corporate America simply wasn't buying from the off-shore crowd.<br /><br />Corporate America simply had to many mental hurdles to get over to recognize the profoundly better idea that was the Macintosh. Simply put, corporate MIS managers of the day were to stupid to buy them.<br /><br />While this may be a harsh argument, how else to you explain the PC and DOS creating a separate software category simply to manage memory. I spent my time on a help desk in that time frame and I know that the money and time spent addressing memory issues would have bought Macs for everyone.

[Andrew J Glina]

History

I thought that the biggest reson why IBM won out was because there was a greater amount of business software.

Wrestling IS going to change the world

You probably had no idea but real wrestling IS going to change <br />the face of the world. Easily the oldest, toughest, and most <br />popular sport in all of history, real wrestling is finally coming <br />into the modern age. <br /><br />Check us out at www.realprowrestling.com<br /><br />It may not be too long until we see Jobs and Gates take it too the <br />mat. <br /><br />My money's on Jobs although I know Gates will wrestle dirty. I <br />know Jobs would win because RPW uses Apple hardware and <br />software big time. We'd make sure Jobs had good coaching and <br />training.

[montgomeryburns]

.

Funny.

What if ? Dumb terminals dominated the world?

What if ? Dumb terminals dominated the world.<br /><br />Maybe the 6 1/2 inch HD was never invented or the first CPU was salvaged from a UFO, and there were only six in the world, but they ran at a trillion cycles ever nanosecond and could run the entire planet without braking a sweat. Wouldn?t our world be different if there were no PC and we all hooked out monitors into a few all powerful super computers controlled by the technological elite?<br /><br />You wouldn?t need a laptop or a home PC any more, you could simply log onto a virtual machine and access your data from anywhere in the world.<br /><br />You wouldn?t need to update or upgrade, because you would only have a VDU, a mouse, and a keyboard. The entire PC and PC service industry wouldn?t exist.<br /><br />We would have no P2P networks for a start, because there would only be a handful of Ps which would probably belong to rival corporations that don?t talk to one another, or they may simply just be incompatible. File sharing would simply be a matter of setting permission and downloading wouldn?t even need to exist. Napster would never have even been thought of, and nobody would ever have heard of the internet.<br /><br />Virus writers would no longer take down single company, instead they could take down the entire Eastern seaboard, necessitating far harsher laws and tighter security, bug fixes too would need to be perfect. A worm writer might be executed by lethal injection, and a memory leak on a home PC is bad enough, so imagine one that was multiplied to a million virtual machines around the world.<br /><br />Software wouldn?t need to be brought, it would simply be rented, and those who had the contracts to write the software for the few super computers that existed would have it made. It would be easy for your product to become the dominant word processor if you had an exclusive contract to write it for a computer that covered a billion people.<br /><br />We might see data sanctions instead of trade sanctions. America could threaten to disconnect every user in Iran if it didn?t open up its nuclear power plants to the UN, and if Luxemburg didn?t back Germany in an EU constitutional vote, then maybe its residents might like to see what happens if all of their users are downgraded to 486 status for a while.<br /><br />No longer would people be able to hide anything, there would be a central control for each super computer that scanned all user areas for pornography or illegal music, or even for subversive material that said, that maybe having all the computer power in the world located in the hands of a few people, wasn?t a good thing.<br /><br />We could conceivably even hear terrible rumors of ?cyber separatist?, small groups of people who wouldn?t submit themselves to the scrutiny of a central computer and who made their own computers and their own networks which were not connected to these super computers and who could not be monitored. What terrible things might these people do? Could your neighbor be one? Are you?<br /><br />These rumors would make little children cry.<br /><br />[e-mail]