Major Microsoft Change Slated --Did We Learn From History?

In July '08, Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie will each be taking over a portion of Bill Gates' role at Microsoft, as the Chairman steps down. This will be a major change in Microsoft that may have an impact on the entire industry.

A "slightly similar" situation has happened in the past, when Apple Computer (now Apple Incorporated) Partner and Co-Founder Steve Jobs [2] was ousted from the company by the board of directors and then CEO John Sculley. Apple started to fall behind in industrial development. The Apple line of computers were slowly being phased out while the Macintosh line kept taking more and more power away from the Apple line. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough major changes in the Macintosh line, which was focused mostly on "Portable Computers," which seemed to hit it's prime with the Macintosh SE and Color Classic. Inevitably, Scully was removed from his position of CEO and replaced with Michael Spindler, who further compounded Apple's problems, including problems areas such as allowing other companies to develop "clone" systems that were not developed by Apple, continuing research into a new OS (Code named: Copland) and failed negotiations of a take over with companies IBM, Phillips, and Sun.

While this was going on in the early 1990s, Microsoft was perfecting it's Windows, improving on Windows 3.1 with 3.11, NT, and 95.

With the industry being geared toward freedom of thought and design, having one primary company stressing innovation within it's own set boundaries while also having a concept of "Think Different" [2] ended up being counter intuitive. By the late 90s, when Windows 95 and later Windows 98 were gaining market share from new computer users and Macintosh people that had converted to Windows, either by necessity or by preference, began to dramatically gain power is when forecasts of Apple's demise began to circulate, citing them as a computer company that just didn't understand modern thinking in the IT industry.

With the limited changes with Mac OS, decreasing market share to Windows, and increasing financial problems, Mac became a minor player in the industry by the late 1990s, when Microsoft's Windows reached 90% market share for the first time. In 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio [2], Apple's shortest lived CEO.

Many people link this "down-swing" of Apple's status directly to Apple's longest running and then CEO --Scully. Mac OS 7 (1991 to 1997) was in it's final life, it's foundation (System 6) and age was making programming difficult and implementation of new hardware concepts increasingly challenging. Scully attempted to implement Mac OS 8, its development starting back during the days of System 6, however the project, known as Copland suffered from stagnation...

Eventually ignored by Apple itself, the Copland project finally dried off in 1996 as Apple began talks with the now defunct Be Incorporated for development of a new Mac OS. However, the Copland project wasn't a total loss however, its features that were favored were slowly integrated into OS 7, while the development of a new OS was abandoned for purchasing of a third party OS that would be purchased by Apple Computer.

Then the shock came. Be Inc. refused to settle for anything lower than $400 Million for Be OS, while Apple refused to pay more than $125 Million for it, by some, the cost of $125 million was considered to be three times as much as it was worth; citing bad blood between then Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée (a former Apple official) and Apple Computer. Due to the stressors of encountering such resistance and lack of development of Mac OS 8, Amelio turned to NeXT. A NeXTSTEP OS and Mac OS merger was quite unexpected by the Macintosh industry, whom cited concern over the NeXT CEO and the short duration of negotiations between Apple Computer and NeXT Computer.

The primary concern of Apple Fanatics was the similarities between the Be negotiations and the NeXT negotiations... After Apple Partner and Co-Founder Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, he founded NeXT, and began work on a new OS concepts and design. Based on the UNIX Mach kernel and BSD Source, the system was slated to revolutionize the OS market. However, differently from Be, and once again a failing of Steve Jobs' business model, the proprietary foundations of NeXT held the company back; NeXT being designed to only run on NeXTSTEP computers, with their high price tag (of around $10,000) limited adaption, and the company was struggling to keep itself afloat. One desperate move after another was made to try to keep the OS going, and then along came Apple... Desperate for a new OS, Jobs required Apple to pay through the nose of NeXT Computers. It isn't clear exactly how much Apple had to pay for NeXT, but it is commonly believed to be at least $375 Million, but no higher than $450 Million; however NeXT also required approximately 1 million shares of Apple for the merger, and placing Jobs as the interim CEO for Apple in 1999.

The story is sweet and simple from there on. Apple released Mac OS 9 shortly after Jobs took over as interim CEO. iMac, iTool (now, .Mac), iTunes and later OS X (based on NeXT) was integrated into Apple's line up, as Steve Jobs took over as Apple's present CEO in 2000.

It is now considered that Steve Jobs saved Apple from folding in 2000, it was an expensive and long term process, but with the salvation of Apple comes a new line of thinking for the IT industry: how dangerous is it to have a major software player have huge changes with its founders? This concept came up when Bill Gates stepped down from CEO to chief software architect and Chairman of the Board, placing Steve Balmer as CEO; allowing Bill Gates to further reduce his role in Microsoft, eventually removing from all day-to-day activity at the business. Bill Gates has slated Ray Ozzie [2] for "day-to-day management" of Microsoft and Craig Mundie [2] as "chief research and strategy officer." While it remains to be seen what will Develop for Bill Gates and Microsoft come 2008, it's ramifications won't be obvious for several years after.

This will definitely be an interesting turning point for Microsoft, and the IT industry in general.

The Second Big Bang, Seven Lives On!

History
Back when I first started with computers, the first system that I fell in love with was a computer at my middle school, my Mac SE. I loved the little critter. It was fairly portable, and so cool and technological! --At least, it was for it's day. Throughout my time in middle school, I secretly wanted one. I didn't tell my parents that, since we just got a Packard Bell 486dx just a year or so before [image: example of pb 486dx, google image search]. However, that didn't change my dream of having an SE of my own.

When I got into high school, I was developing into being an expert at Windows 9x and later Windows 2000. My days as a Mac user were far behind me and the newer versions of Mac OS (7.5.x and 8.x) seemed to pale in comparison. Their graphics seemed basic and as I got further into Windows, it just seemed that I was able to do more with the OS in comparison to Mac OS... But I still wanted a good ol' SE to grace my desk... Even if it was just to have Tetris, Oregon Trail, and my favorite: Brickels (Break Out).

As time went on, I developed a rapport with Garrett, a classmate of mine who went to the same elementary and middle school as I did. We never became good friends, especially since he was the King of Mac at school, whereas I was more of a PC Fanboy. Garrett and I still managed to forge a friendship, and one day, when my school district was having an auction selling off old computer equipment that they were phasing out in favor of newer equipment (namely, PCs).

At the auction, I was able to get my hands on two Mac SE systems. They had the spiffy 20 meg hard drive and everything! They even came with OS 7.1 and loaded with software, like Microsoft Office version 2.1 and Claris Works and games like, you guessed it Break Out, Tetris, and Oregon Trail! I was loving it. I not only had a ol' Mac SE to grace my desk, but I also had a second one in case something failed with the first one. I spent a lot of time tinkering with these two Macs, and even had them networked together for a while, sharing the entire hard drive of of each computer to the other.

Eventually, I tired of using the old systems, and put one away and left one out on my desk, just to tinker with occasionally. Eventually, it became more of "potted plant" on my desk that a commonly used system... However, I did make one exception, I kept a journal on that old SE, a kind of "Year in Review" thing, written late in December or Early in January. They also included a quick snip-bit of a look into my day, to give me something to look back on and smile. I tried to do some homework on the SE, but with only a dot matrix printer and with commonly required fonts, like Times New Roman and what not being required, they quickly lost that job as well.

The computers nearly became forgotten once college became my focus, and Windows 2000 my primary OS with a few experiments into Mandrake Linux. The old SE systems dropped further out of range after I got my Indigo iMac 350 Mhz running OS 9.2, and later OS X (10.0 -- and quite badly at that). When college started, I didn't even bring a single Mac with me, including my new iMac. I only brought one PC and one laptop, and went into my computer programming degree. I still occasionally had a desire to use good ol' 7, but I just never had the space in my little dorm room to bring in an old SE unit nor was I able to find a decent emulator for one. So I just lived without... Besides, when I had requirements to meet for school, I wasn't about to take the slowest and oldest computer that I had access to and bring it into the dorms... Besides, my SE systems were special to me, and I didn't want to lose them at college.

Eventually, I was able to get my hands on two more Mac SE systems in 2003. Further adding to my Mac collection and my ability to combine the software from the four machines into one collection of games and programs. I never even brought the SE systems into the dorm, much to the complaint of my college roommates who wanted to "check the system out." Instead, the systems went staight home where they were placed into my collection.

I even eventually lost the iMac Indigo... After loaning it to my cousin, who didn't have a computer of his own; and then finding out later that he left it in his apartment, which he abandoned. To this day, I have no clue where the computer is. I hope it found a good home, but with the issues my cousin was going through at the time, I suspect it may have been the innocent victim of my cousin's ex-girlfriend's wrath.

After that, I hardly used Mac OS for a long time. I would tinker with it when ever I got the chance on one of the campus Macintosh computers (we had two Baker College of Owosso Macintosh computers, Power Macs which were only used by the graphic design students).

In September 2006, I decided to purchase a new Macintosh, a MacBook with the Intel Core Duo processor. It would be much faster than the old Macintosh computers I had used in the past and being built on OS X, it would provide me with a stable *nix-like environment that is easy to use. I loved the thing, but there is still something to be said about sitting in-front of a desktop computer and actually having some serious power under the hood, which just isn't possible to replicate on a laptop.

Earlier this Week....
I happened across this website SE Item, a clear Mac SE, limited to 10 production units and "only released" to Apple "SE Project Managers," which got me looking into older Mac SE info, which directed me to Mac ITX, a site where a guy moded his old Mac SE into a modern Windows 2000 computer, running an emulator for Mac OS 7, that emulator was called Basilisk II, which is the emulator which is enabling me to type this blog in SimpleText running in Mac OS 7.5.3 rev. 2 [image: simpletext in os 7].

The system was difficult to install at first, finding an old Mac to get a ROM image from, then getting the correct .dsk image to use in Linux, and then again getting the installer to work correctly, but it eventually turned out totally swankin' [image: mac os 7.5.3 installer].

I don't have much software in the emulated Mac OS, but that may soon change with my good old-school Mac connections I have. I may even invest in some other version of the OS just to tinker with. Good ol' System 6. And apparently, BasiliskII supports Mac System Software starting with System Software 0.X, the earliest releases of what would eventually become Mac OS. It'll be interesting to play around with as time goes on.

Drawbacks
For one thing, I cannot find the "Option" key on my keyboard.
- Control maps to control
- Command maps to Alt
- Windows doesn't map to anything.
No combination of shift or holding multiple keys (CTRL + ALT) and what-not have revealed which key I need to press to get Option to come up...

The emulator keeps my PC running at high-utilization [image: ksysguard].

The emulator can be quite unstable, crashing frequently and randomly (save often, there's no "auto save" in SimpleText 1.3.1!

No Ethernet access... yet. I want to bridge BasiliskII with my Ethernet adapter and see if I can get an old version of Netscape on the puppy. On the "to-do" list for this weekend, along with testing of the CD ROM interface.

Trouble writing to "Unix" -- although, this may be by design, I would love to be able to quickly and easily save documents between OS 7 and "Unix" (which is "/" in my SUSE Linux system).

Awesomeness
Sound works just fine, including the "speaking" functions of Mac OS 7.5... Well, as good as can be expected from an OS that's well into it's 12 year of operation and running in an emulator. I actually wasn't expecting sound to work at all!

Quick response time. OS 7 was designed to run on a 68K processor, yes, but running in emulation mode it has quite the speed boost. The system takes only a handful of seconds to boot up. And loading extensions is nearly instant. Swankin' I can't wait to try out some of my old games on this bad boy, just to see if things work as well now as they did in the past, or perhaps, as the Mac ITX people have said, maybe running the 68k emulator is the "ultimate hack for an Mac SE."