[opendtv] Re: I'm starting to feel sorry for, and worry about, Apple

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 19:00:29 -0500

Tom Barry wrote:

> IBM went from being open and more easily cloned to much more
> closed and less desirable. Apple became more open and more
> popular.

I disagree that this is what happened.

IBM had already let the cat out of the bag, is the "problem." The PS/2 with MCA 
was indeed an improvement over the old ISA, *but* the PC design was already 
open. Meaning, there were other companies working on "plug and play" for the 
ISA bus and on faster backplanes to replace ISA, without having to go to the 
MCA. EISA and then PCA soon did what MCA could do, at least as far as 
peripherals went.

And as always happens in this field, the MCA bus soon became inadequate as a 
memory bus, so that nice idea of a common bus became irrelevant anyway. You 
needed a separate memory bus even on MCA machines.

So the problem is not that the PS/2 was more proprietary. It is that the PC was 
already open source, AND that the attempt to close that door forgot that there 
were no walls around this new door.

Apple, instead, never went open anything. At best, they allow modified 
Microsoft applications to run on their machines, because they can't deny the 
popularity.

Bert
 
 
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