[Am-info] New Apple store near Beantown

[Mitch Stone]

--- From a message sent by Paul Rickard on 12/16/01 9:22 PM ---

>========== On 2001.12.16 11:55 PM, John Bryan typed: ============
>
>>Wasn't there also
>>
>>   4/ Continue to provide Office apps for Mac for next 5 years (which is 
>>up next 8/02 BTW) ?
>
>     That's when things get really in-te-resting. If you think Steve Jobs 
>got vocal about the antitrust settlement, just wait until that contract 
>is up. Apple doesn't need Microsoft NEARLY as desperately as it did in 
>1997 when most people didn't expect the company to see the 21st century. 
>Apple has reestablished itself as a good brand, a producer of dependable 
>products with (limited) mass appeal, and a company with a future. Apple 
>is financially stable enough to survive for years without selling a 
>single product, so there's less pressing demand for a quick fix like 
>there was in the summer of 1997. AppleWorks can read and save to some 
>Office document formats, so Office is no longer required for at least 
>partial compatibility. Plus Steve and Co. are well aware that Microsoft 
>doesn't need them anymore to make itself look like less of a monopoly and 
>is free to attack at any time, so they'll be more careful about going 
>into the Beast's cage.
>     If Microsoft and Apple agree to anything else after August it will 
>be much less favorable to Microsoft, but I would honestly be surprised to 
>see any further agreement between the two whatsoever. Keep in mind that 
>Microsoft is quickly changing its paradigms to that loopy distributed 
>software .NET scheme, so there will be no more updates for Mac Office (or 
>anything else really) without attachment to Passport and MSN. There will 
>be no .NET on the Macintosh, so Office:Mac for OS X will be the end of 
>the road. There's no way Apple will get sucked into that distributed 
>rentware tar baby as long as Steve Jobs and Avie are inside the company. 
>I just can't imagine that ever happening, unfathomable, impossible.
>
>          ...I hope I don't live to eat those words.

You make a good point, but I'll disagree with only one aspect of it -- 
the loss of Office for the Mac would harm the platform's future viability 
substantially, even now. I would not be surprised if the next phase of 
the antitrust case (and you know there's going to be one), centers around 
Microsoft ability to damage competitors by withdrawing availability their 
monopoly software products.

 Mitch Stone  
 mitch@accidentalexpert.com