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From the article: "[Gates] also said there was no viable alternative to the Windows operating system in the market at the time [1995], which would mean Novell d

From the article: "[Gates] also said there was no viable alternative to the Windows operating system in the market at the time [1995], which would mean Novell does not have an antitrust case." That statement is only even remotely true if one interprets it to mean that there was no alternative to Windows at the time that ran on the same hardware. Macintosh computers were alive and well, no?

firefoxman1 15y ago
But you could only get MacOS by buying a Mac. Windows was just the operating system.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  "Mac OS" wasn't even a term until 1997. It was just the unnamed OS software of Macintosh computers. If there was a discrete operating system market, Apple was not a participant at the time involved in this suit.
  - jamesgeck0 15y ago
    It had a name; it was just called "Mac System Software" or "System [version number]", not Mac OS. http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-macos.htm http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-m... Edit: Apple also had an official licensing program for Mac system software between 1995 and 1998. I'm not sure if it was before or after the lawsuit, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Official_Macintosh_clone_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Official_Macint...
jamesgeck0 15y ago
For the curious, this is what installing RedHat Linux 2.0 looked like cera 1995. Ah, rawrite; I don't miss you at all. http://www.viddler.com/explore/pdweinstein/videos/5/ http://www.viddler.com/explore/pdweinstein/videos/5/
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ktsmith 15y ago
  I actually found an old set of root/boot disks for slackware while cleaning out a box of old junk the other day. Using fvwm2 gave a pretty similar experience to windows 95 as far as the user interface went.
- palish 15y ago
  Hah, wow: http://i.imgur.com/appZl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/appZl.jpg "And you'll see listed here are a number of boot images. Each one of these boot images contains the configuration of a kernel that will probably match one of your systems. Let's go ahead and use the DOS program 'edit' to view the images.idx file now." http://i.imgur.com/V0PX0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/V0PX0.jpg "Here it shows in the left hand column the last four numbers of the boot images of the files we just saw earlier. On the right side is a description of the type of system we need to install it onto. For example if you look on the first line it'll show that it has IDE/ATAPI or SCSI. In other words if I take the boot image 0000 then I will be able to utilize the boot image on a system that has an IDE CD-ROM drive." Heh. It sounds like installing Linux was as easy as 0001, 0002, 0003...
  - kristopolous 15y ago
    I actually did this, back then, a few times (I was a pipping teen in the day). It was enormously fun; absolutely loved it; all on a 486-dx(2?) Recompiling the kernel manually was something you just did; it was expected. Downloading a bunch of source code and compiling the dependencies and managing everything yourself; also completely ordinary. The best thing was going between Pillbox, Yggdrasil, Mandrake, Slackware(!) ... those were the days! There were two floppy disks that you would boot from, the `Boot` and the `Root` if I remember right. If you had a system up and running you could use dd, otherwise there was a DOS tool that would do as much. Interestingly, this was when the first thing you'd see at boot was LILO The LILO above was actually a complex diagnostic result. Getting something like LILILILILILILILI was possible or LIL They all meant a bunch of different things. If you got the full LILO you would be like "phew, it worked". Otherwise, you use your rescue floppy (or the one you used to install, had to remember to keep those around) and figure out what was wrong. CDs originally weren't bootable and lots of BIOSES didn't know how to deal with them. There was a standard that went out called the "El Torito" or something that basically talked about how CDROMS would be bootable. I think Windows 98 had this; in fact, I think it came out of Redmond (but I haven't done my homework in the Goog) So in 199x, even if you had a fancy bootable CD, you were still making floppy images, then inserting the CD when instructed to. In fact, I still have a box of floppies just in case I need to deal with hardware pre-1999 ... which is becoming less and less relevant (I think I used one last in 2006). Then again, I used a 5 1/4 in 2003 ... so I guess it's worth keeping around another 4-6 years. The worst memory I have is when I found out just how bad swap could be. I had to compile the NetBSD kernel on a laptop I had (IBM 360C, active color 640x480 display, NiCd battery, 2.88MB floppy, SCSI disk, huge docking station with speakers ... this is about 1999 (more of 1999 below)) and it had all of 8MB of RAM. I had to recompile the kernel to make use of an early wireless (which felt like pure magic) PCCARD I had (mind you, 16 bit, not 32-bit CardBus) and the kernel took 4.5 days(!) to compile. In fact, I remember starting it Christmas eve before eating dinner and it went on through Christmas day and then a few days after that. I had mastered screen by this time so I was able to see that the machine was really chugging away. The reason was that the compiler used up all of my RAM and was hitting swap. After that I upgraded the machine and the new compilation took 40 minutes. 40 minutes then, seemed like getting DSL for the first time and then clicking on that 10MB file and thinking "What is going on here? A whole megabyte downloaded right in front of my eyes? In mere seconds?! I am never going outside again". I long for these exciting days. The mobile world has it, that's about it. More about 1999; Speaking of 1999, two other big things, the BeOS 5 Demo, booted from windows and was awesome, then there was the "Bootable Floppy Challenge" which was done by QNX ... it was quite impressive in the day.
jpancake 15y ago
Having used MacOS exclusively from roughly 93-96, it was my experience that, at that point, it was certainly not a viable alternative to Windows, especially after Win95 was released. The only industries that would touch Mac in those days were publishing/pre-press/design, and that was due to Quark being only available on the Mac. I started using Photoshop on Windows maybe in 97 and it was shocking how much better it ran on Win95. Lord help you if you tried to use a web browser while running another application.

firefoxman1 15y ago

But you could only get MacOS by buying a Mac. Windows was just the operating system.

dangrossman 15y ago
"Mac OS" wasn't even a term until 1997. It was just the unnamed OS software of Macintosh computers. If there was a discrete operating system market, Apple was not a participant at the time involved in this suit.
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  It had a name; it was just called "Mac System Software" or "System [version number]", not Mac OS. http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-macos.htm http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-m... Edit: Apple also had an official licensing program for Mac system software between 1995 and 1998. I'm not sure if it was before or after the lawsuit, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Official_Macintosh_clone_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Official_Macint...

jamesgeck0 15y ago

For the curious, this is what installing RedHat Linux 2.0 looked like cera 1995. Ah, rawrite; I don't miss you at all. http://www.viddler.com/explore/pdweinstein/videos/5/ http://www.viddler.com/explore/pdweinstein/videos/5/

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ktsmith 15y ago
I actually found an old set of root/boot disks for slackware while cleaning out a box of old junk the other day. Using fvwm2 gave a pretty similar experience to windows 95 as far as the user interface went.
palish 15y ago
Hah, wow: http://i.imgur.com/appZl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/appZl.jpg "And you'll see listed here are a number of boot images. Each one of these boot images contains the configuration of a kernel that will probably match one of your systems. Let's go ahead and use the DOS program 'edit' to view the images.idx file now." http://i.imgur.com/V0PX0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/V0PX0.jpg "Here it shows in the left hand column the last four numbers of the boot images of the files we just saw earlier. On the right side is a description of the type of system we need to install it onto. For example if you look on the first line it'll show that it has IDE/ATAPI or SCSI. In other words if I take the boot image 0000 then I will be able to utilize the boot image on a system that has an IDE CD-ROM drive." Heh. It sounds like installing Linux was as easy as 0001, 0002, 0003...
- kristopolous 15y ago
  I actually did this, back then, a few times (I was a pipping teen in the day). It was enormously fun; absolutely loved it; all on a 486-dx(2?) Recompiling the kernel manually was something you just did; it was expected. Downloading a bunch of source code and compiling the dependencies and managing everything yourself; also completely ordinary. The best thing was going between Pillbox, Yggdrasil, Mandrake, Slackware(!) ... those were the days! There were two floppy disks that you would boot from, the `Boot` and the `Root` if I remember right. If you had a system up and running you could use dd, otherwise there was a DOS tool that would do as much. Interestingly, this was when the first thing you'd see at boot was LILO The LILO above was actually a complex diagnostic result. Getting something like LILILILILILILILI was possible or LIL They all meant a bunch of different things. If you got the full LILO you would be like "phew, it worked". Otherwise, you use your rescue floppy (or the one you used to install, had to remember to keep those around) and figure out what was wrong. CDs originally weren't bootable and lots of BIOSES didn't know how to deal with them. There was a standard that went out called the "El Torito" or something that basically talked about how CDROMS would be bootable. I think Windows 98 had this; in fact, I think it came out of Redmond (but I haven't done my homework in the Goog) So in 199x, even if you had a fancy bootable CD, you were still making floppy images, then inserting the CD when instructed to. In fact, I still have a box of floppies just in case I need to deal with hardware pre-1999 ... which is becoming less and less relevant (I think I used one last in 2006). Then again, I used a 5 1/4 in 2003 ... so I guess it's worth keeping around another 4-6 years. The worst memory I have is when I found out just how bad swap could be. I had to compile the NetBSD kernel on a laptop I had (IBM 360C, active color 640x480 display, NiCd battery, 2.88MB floppy, SCSI disk, huge docking station with speakers ... this is about 1999 (more of 1999 below)) and it had all of 8MB of RAM. I had to recompile the kernel to make use of an early wireless (which felt like pure magic) PCCARD I had (mind you, 16 bit, not 32-bit CardBus) and the kernel took 4.5 days(!) to compile. In fact, I remember starting it Christmas eve before eating dinner and it went on through Christmas day and then a few days after that. I had mastered screen by this time so I was able to see that the machine was really chugging away. The reason was that the compiler used up all of my RAM and was hitting swap. After that I upgraded the machine and the new compilation took 40 minutes. 40 minutes then, seemed like getting DSL for the first time and then clicking on that 10MB file and thinking "What is going on here? A whole megabyte downloaded right in front of my eyes? In mere seconds?! I am never going outside again". I long for these exciting days. The mobile world has it, that's about it. More about 1999; Speaking of 1999, two other big things, the BeOS 5 Demo, booted from windows and was awesome, then there was the "Bootable Floppy Challenge" which was done by QNX ... it was quite impressive in the day.

jpancake 15y ago

Having used MacOS exclusively from roughly 93-96, it was my experience that, at that point, it was certainly not a viable alternative to Windows, especially after Win95 was released. The only industries that would touch Mac in those days were publishing/pre-press/design, and that was due to Quark being only available on the Mac. I started using Photoshop on Windows maybe in 97 and it was shocking how much better it ran on Win95. Lord help you if you tried to use a web browser while running another application.