Ripe apples drop about my head"
Andrew Marvell
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses, and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."
English Nursery Rhyme (Traditional)
Cut to the Core...
Blood has been shed in Cupertino. Thirteen hundred workers lose their jobs. Graziano quits. Spindler's fired.
Amelio - the great savior - is at the helm, promising "the troubles we have are very fixable."
Not.
Let's face it,
After losing market share and racking up enormous losses in the last quarter of last year, Apple started the new year looking at a derisory bid from Sun Microsystems.
It was rejected. But not after some consideration.
After pioneering color monitors and drag and drop, Apple threw it all away with inept marketing and terrible PR. The company which forged the way for the personal computer revolution now faces a certain future as part of a conglomerate.
But which one?
Well, not Sun.
But possibly - I'm almost embarrassed to mention the word - Microsoft?
OKOKOKOKOK! I'm no fan of Bill Gates - and this piece is being written on a Performa.
But the fact remains that the fit between the two companies makes perfect sense.
Let's try - just for a moment - to put passions and partisanship to one side. Let's take a look at this scenario.
Apple missed the boat years ago by refusing to license its operating system. Microsoft, on the other hand, was positively promiscuous with DOS.
Apple has consistently had production problems - supply hasn't kept up with demand for particular models at any given time.
So much for "Just In Time" inventory control.
Apple's great strength has been its technical innovation and ease of use. The Apple OS is still years ahead of Windows 95 - the launch of which Apple signally failed to exploit to its advantage.
So try this for size.
Amelio housecleans at Apple. He is appalled at what he finds. He reports back to the Board, which throws up its hands in horror - and does nothing.
Enter Gates. Through fair means or foul, he acquires the company.
He immediately divests Apple of its manufacturing function by licensing the OS to anyone and everyone. Apple, at its core, becomes an advanced technical research company, with a vestigial manufacturing base, producing highly advanced machines specializing in Apple multimedia applications. The company also concentrates on further developing the Apple OS.
The short-term result will be Apple computer prices dropping through the floor, and the market being flooded with Apple knock-offs.
In the medium term, Microsoft will announce that work has started on Windows 2000.
On January 1, 2000, "Windows 2000" is launched. It's actually Apple System 9.0 with a few bells and whistles, and is truly cross-platform. PC users, of course, will be forced to buy a new processor to deal with the new OS. But that's OK - they're used to shelling out a couple of grand for hardware upgrades to try out a new MS OS...
Of course, the Feds won't let it happen...
February 1996
© 1996 FeNiX
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