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It was actually the next CEO, Gil Amelio, that cut off the clone makers. Except for UMAX, who accepted the new clone terms (that would give Apple a % of sale p

It was actually the next CEO, Gil Amelio, that cut off the clone makers. Except for UMAX, who accepted the new clone terms (that would give Apple a % of sale price instead of a [too-low, assuming that the clones would be a race to the bottom] fixed fee per machine sold) and actually got to distribute MacOS 8 for a while.

hnbear 4y ago
I thought it was Jobs. The clones licensed System 7, so jobs took the next version, branded it 8 and forced it out, cutting them off.
- masswerk 4y ago
  Yes, Amelio's departure coincided with the release of System 8 in July 1997. (The NeXT deal and Jobs' return was in February.) To be fair, System 8 was more than just a service update for System 7: it introduced the Platinum UI, the Appearance API, a multithreaded Finder, and various Copland features. (This was quite a rich update, maybe second only to System 7. It would have been a bit strange to just give this all away as System 7.7.)
  - hnbear 4y ago
    7.6 felt like Snow Leopard. Great stable OS after the flakiness of low 7s. Then 8 felt like a huge shift to the modern. Yes, would have been weird to be 7.7. An ideal break point. Seems odd the clones licensed by OS version, not duration. 9 didn’t have the same change feel.
    - masswerk 4y ago
      System 9 was really just about some compatibility layers in preparation for OSX, as I remember it. (And, yes, 7.6 was a major step in terms of stability. There was also some pre-PPC, pre-OpenDoc version of System 7 that was pretty stable, but with all those major integrations that came with the further iterations, things became a bit "delicate".)
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        IIRC Mac OS 9.0.x had significant changes for users directly booted into it, as did 9.1 (though to a lesser extent). I think it was 9.2.X that was mostly focused on usage with Classic.
        hnbear 4y ago
        Yes, might be right there. 9 introduced the changes to allow multiple-users on a Mac, with a log-in screen. Going off fuzzy memory. And then Classic/Carbon/Cocoa came around.
  - Someone 4y ago
    > System 8 was more than just a service update for System 7 A lot more, eventually. System 8.6 brought a fully pre-emptive kernel with multi processing (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3656.0 http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3656.0) Problem was that, for backwards compatibility, all applications ran in a single pre-emptively scheduled task that cooperatively scheduled between them. You could write additional tasks that got scheduled preemptively, but they couldn’t make all system calls (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/Multitasking_MultiproServ/03tasks/tasks.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ca...)
- kalleboo 4y ago
  Amelio identified that the clone deal was bad (fixed license cost instead of based on % of machine price) and rebranded to MacOS 8 in order to renegotiate to get a better clone deal. Spindler made the original clone deals assuming they would be chasing aggressively low pricing as seen in the PC market but instead the clones ate Apple's high-end market, replacing Apple's high-end margin with cheap OS licenses. So Amelio wanted to renegotiate the deals to be based on the value of the machine so that Apple would not lose from a clone maker selling a high-end machine instead of Apple. Jobs as iCEO continued the negotiations (after all, NeXT was also an OS-only company at that point so Jobs wasn't necessarily sold on the idea that Apple had to sell hardware) but nobody aside from UMAX bit on the more expensive MacOS 8 license (so yeah there was one clone they had a MacOS 8 license - you can find UMAX MacOS 8 CDs out there) so Jobs gave up, and there were no other clones. So Amelio started it and Jobs finished it.
NovaDudely 4y ago
Looking back, Amelio had some decent ideas on how to get Apple back on track but he just didn't have that inspiration to get people excited over it all. Things like iMac, the 4 different system tiers, reducing the amount of research projects to a fraction of what they had were all done under his watch. Steve however kicked it into over drive and actually got people talking about Apple again. Also didn't help that a 2 hour presentation by Amelio felt like weeks!
- anoncow 4y ago
  > Steve however kicked it into overdrive… Is there a specific action of Steve’s that comes to your mind?
  - NovaDudely 4y ago
    A good example is that Apple had something like 350 different projects. Amelio ended up cutting down to around 50 to be more focused. Steve cut it down to just 12. The idea of making the business hyper lean and hyper focused at the same time. Amelio started to focus on things like reducing the amount of SKU's and pushing hard on Education. Steve took that and actually communicated this to the world. And that was the big thing Steve managed to do. Capture peoples imagination and put out the image that Apple wasn't dead in the water. By leaning hard on those few things that made them different at the time - like the iMac.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  As I saw it reading his book, he correctly identified what was wrong with Apple to get it to the point it was, and had good ideas to fix that. But he didn't have the respect of the rank-and-file to implement the ideas without being undermined, and his ideas for what to do next were all wrong (the stuff in the last chapter of his book when he rails at Jobs).

hnbear 4y ago

I thought it was Jobs. The clones licensed System 7, so jobs took the next version, branded it 8 and forced it out, cutting them off.

masswerk 4y ago
Yes, Amelio's departure coincided with the release of System 8 in July 1997. (The NeXT deal and Jobs' return was in February.) To be fair, System 8 was more than just a service update for System 7: it introduced the Platinum UI, the Appearance API, a multithreaded Finder, and various Copland features. (This was quite a rich update, maybe second only to System 7. It would have been a bit strange to just give this all away as System 7.7.)
- hnbear 4y ago
  7.6 felt like Snow Leopard. Great stable OS after the flakiness of low 7s. Then 8 felt like a huge shift to the modern. Yes, would have been weird to be 7.7. An ideal break point. Seems odd the clones licensed by OS version, not duration. 9 didn’t have the same change feel.
  - masswerk 4y ago
    System 9 was really just about some compatibility layers in preparation for OSX, as I remember it. (And, yes, 7.6 was a major step in terms of stability. There was also some pre-PPC, pre-OpenDoc version of System 7 that was pretty stable, but with all those major integrations that came with the further iterations, things became a bit "delicate".)
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      IIRC Mac OS 9.0.x had significant changes for users directly booted into it, as did 9.1 (though to a lesser extent). I think it was 9.2.X that was mostly focused on usage with Classic.
      - hnbear 4y ago
        Yes, might be right there. 9 introduced the changes to allow multiple-users on a Mac, with a log-in screen. Going off fuzzy memory. And then Classic/Carbon/Cocoa came around.
- Someone 4y ago
  > System 8 was more than just a service update for System 7 A lot more, eventually. System 8.6 brought a fully pre-emptive kernel with multi processing (http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3656.0 http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=3656.0) Problem was that, for backwards compatibility, all applications ran in a single pre-emptively scheduled task that cooperatively scheduled between them. You could write additional tasks that got scheduled preemptively, but they couldn’t make all system calls (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/Multitasking_MultiproServ/03tasks/tasks.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ca...)
kalleboo 4y ago
Amelio identified that the clone deal was bad (fixed license cost instead of based on % of machine price) and rebranded to MacOS 8 in order to renegotiate to get a better clone deal. Spindler made the original clone deals assuming they would be chasing aggressively low pricing as seen in the PC market but instead the clones ate Apple's high-end market, replacing Apple's high-end margin with cheap OS licenses. So Amelio wanted to renegotiate the deals to be based on the value of the machine so that Apple would not lose from a clone maker selling a high-end machine instead of Apple. Jobs as iCEO continued the negotiations (after all, NeXT was also an OS-only company at that point so Jobs wasn't necessarily sold on the idea that Apple had to sell hardware) but nobody aside from UMAX bit on the more expensive MacOS 8 license (so yeah there was one clone they had a MacOS 8 license - you can find UMAX MacOS 8 CDs out there) so Jobs gave up, and there were no other clones. So Amelio started it and Jobs finished it.

NovaDudely 4y ago

Looking back, Amelio had some decent ideas on how to get Apple back on track but he just didn't have that inspiration to get people excited over it all. Things like iMac, the 4 different system tiers, reducing the amount of research projects to a fraction of what they had were all done under his watch. Steve however kicked it into over drive and actually got people talking about Apple again. Also didn't help that a 2 hour presentation by Amelio felt like weeks!

anoncow 4y ago
> Steve however kicked it into overdrive… Is there a specific action of Steve’s that comes to your mind?
- NovaDudely 4y ago
  A good example is that Apple had something like 350 different projects. Amelio ended up cutting down to around 50 to be more focused. Steve cut it down to just 12. The idea of making the business hyper lean and hyper focused at the same time. Amelio started to focus on things like reducing the amount of SKU's and pushing hard on Education. Steve took that and actually communicated this to the world. And that was the big thing Steve managed to do. Capture peoples imagination and put out the image that Apple wasn't dead in the water. By leaning hard on those few things that made them different at the time - like the iMac.
kalleboo 4y ago
As I saw it reading his book, he correctly identified what was wrong with Apple to get it to the point it was, and had good ideas to fix that. But he didn't have the respect of the rank-and-file to implement the ideas without being undermined, and his ideas for what to do next were all wrong (the stuff in the last chapter of his book when he rails at Jobs).